Way to brown...

Zoom Raider

This is a picture that I took a couple Saturdays ago of an elder who was preaching at our church.
I take pictures for the church's newsletter. Most of my pictures that I've taken for the NL
has been okay to those that put the NL together, but our pastor ran PowerPoint
today with the elder's picture on it, and so he asked me if I could somehow make the walls white,
the dark green plant on the left not so dark green, and make the elder's skin tone a true pigment,`cos he's a bit too brownish-red.

When I mess with it, it keeps coming out with too much fuzz, (color-noise, I guess).
I used my Lightsphere, but I was too far away with the lens set at about 24mm. Direct-flash would have blasted white everywhere,
like a nuclear explosion. Ceiling-bounce wouldn't do the job, so the picture is somewhat bad.
So I was wondering since I give up on making it better using all the photo-editors that I have,
would someone in here like to have a shot at it? Then I'll use what you guys worked with and then send it to my pastor for next week.

Thanks!

ziggy53

This is my second attempt, mostly a simple white balance off the collar, and then a gamma adjustment using "Levels". There is no way to make the walls white, without masking the individual, and then I don't think you would like the results.

Scott_Quier

Here's my attempt. Making the wall white - like Ziggy says, not going to happen unless you do some masking work. It appears that you didn't use enough light to propery expose everything. The dark plant on the left is nearly absolutely black (RGB = 8, 10, 9).

What did I do:

• Set white point on color
• Set gray point on his suit
• Drop the red saturation and lightness

Without knowing his actual skin tones, this was what I came up with.

ziggy53

BTW, I find that I often get better results using a large "scoop" type reflector in addition to a flash bracket. It positions the primary light high enough to prevent most reflections, especially in a 1 or 2 shot, and gives enough edge definition to be believable without being harsh. Light falloff is similar to other large emitters.