Need some expert help on a challenging image

Zigrivers

Hi all -

I have been reading through a lot of great posts here and have learned a ton. There are some amazing people that frequent these boards and I'm hoping that one of you (or several - ) will take the time to take a crack at this image:



I have spent hours on this trying to figure out the best way to add some pop to the colors, remove the noise and attain a good level of sharpness. I was hoping that one of you might have the skills and experience necessary to turn this into a much better photograph and include your step by step process (I have another 40 images taken during the same game that I will want to fix as well).

I shot this in RAW, but I'm not sure how I could get the RAW file to you - if that will make things easier/better.

Thanks for any help! If I can turn these pictures into something printable I will be very happy and grateful!

Let me know if you have any questions.

BTW - you can download the photo from my gallery here:

http://thatcher.smugmug.com/gallery/1893878/1/95466108/Large

richtersl

What photo editing software do you currently use?

Zigrivers

richtersl wrote:

What photo editing software do you currently use?

I use Photoshop CS2 and ACR.

Steve Cavigliano

Ken,
I played with the original jpg for a few minutes. I think the major issue here is the noise. I also believe you could have possibly minimized this somewhat during conversion. Whether you pushed some areas to show even more noise. Or whether you didn't apply enough NR or luminance smoothing.

Anyhow, shoot me the RAW if you can (email should be fine) and I will play with it later









Steve

zacker

sometimes your just better off either converting to B&W and going for the old film grain look (which wont work here as this type shot should be in color) or reducing noise in a noisware program like neat image and leaving the final output of theimage smaller so as not to show softness as much. or, blasting it right into the scrap bin (which id hate to do, its a great shot.) its all up to you. try neat image or noise ninja..see if they help.

samerj

Hi,

I applied a noise reduction filter ( Neat Image ) and slightly played with curves and that's about it, It is too noisy (high iso and no flash used ) to get more detials out of it.

richtersl

The noise from using the 1600 ISO is a problem but it can be minimized. NeatImage, as you can see, does a fairly good job of removing it. You should also be able to do something similar with Photoshop that I did with Photoshop Elements 3.0:

• Duplicated the Background layer
• Chose Noise > Reduce Noise from the Filter menu and applied the following settings:
  • First Pass - Strength: 10; Preserve Details: 44; Reduce Color Noise: 100%
  • Second Pass - Strength: 5; Preserve Details: 44; Reduce Color Noise: 100%
• Added a Levels Layer to boost the contrast a bit and hide some more of the noise in the darker of the two uniforms. Used the following input level settings: 26/0.87/255

SloYerRoll

If there is any reason Mr. Buzzcut and the effeminate looking boy in the background are needed? Try some lens blur and narrow down the DOF to just the two subjects.
Then spend time on the boys w/ Select>Color Range{sampled colors} (don't forget to feather to save yourself work later) then using the Image>Adjustments>Channel Mixer to get some really nice colors out of the subjects (CM is a nice color tool that is often misunderstood and misused). You can get somewhat the same desired effect using Image>Adjustments>Selective Color and pushing the colors out to wherever you want them.

Oh yea, you'd be surprised what a few passes of despeckle and the blur tool do for noisy images.

Good post production is all about subtle changes.

-Jon

Steve Cavigliano

SloYerRoll wrote:

If there is any reason Mr. Buzzcut and the effeminate looking boy in the background are needed? -Jon

You may be right Slo. But I was thinking that the effeminate one is actually a girl In which case it is A-OK to be effeminate....

I agree with the blurring idea

Steve