Need idea/help for fixing an image

jfriend

I've got this image (given to me by someone else) that I need to fix for a local publication. Obviously, it would have benefited from some fill flash because of the strong shadows. But there is detail in the shadows if it can be pulled out. I've worked on it a bit myself with shadow/highlights and some masks, but I'm not very happy with the result so far. I'd love some ideas on how you all rescue the facial shadows without compromising the landscape aspects of the photo.

Here's a link to the original: http://jfriend.smugmug.com/photos/219676285-O.jpg.

Here's a medium sized view of the photo to see what I'm talking about:

DavidTO

I think the fill light slider would do this nicely.

Richard

DavidTO wrote:

I think the fill light slider would do this nicely.

Yes, fill light is a good place to start. I only have it for raw files, so I played with it in CS2.

The strategy was to convert to LAB and use Blend If sliders on a curves layer that raised the L of the face shadows. The faces are positive in both A and B so that was a good start but it was still way too dark. I duplicated the background layer, set it to screen mode and 50% opacity and used the same blend if settings. It was looking better, but compared to the original, there was too much change in the left foreground rocks. So I added a rough mask on the curves layer to cover that part on the curve layer. I thought the faces were still too dark, so I duplicated the curves layer, added a mask to hide all then quickly painted away the faces.



Not great, but hopefully not terrible. I'm interested in seeing what some other people come up with.

Cheers,

pyrtek

I used two screen mode levels layers. The first at 100%, the second at 30%.
Only on the faces, of course.

pathfinder

John, I did this very simply, without complicated techniques.

I downloaded your image,pulled it into PS, and used ctrl-J to create a duplicate layer.

I then typed D and then X to get white ink for my paint brush, which I used with a very soft edge. I set my Brush to paint in SOFT LIGHT mode at about 14% and began to just paint over the darkened areas of the faces. I overdid this just a slight bit, and then used the Opacity slider in the Layers palette to back it off to taste. Less than 3 minutes.

Tell me what you think it is a atttached jpg at level 5 so a full sized image attacked this way will look better, of course. ( If they are not bright enough, the Opacity slider could have made them brighter, but I thought too much more would look out of place in this image ) I don't think you can expect to duplicate good fill flash here, but I could be wrong of course.

aktpics

I took the lazy-man's approach... I haven't tried playing with a jpg in raw cs3 yet, so had to play... Fill: 82, Recovery: 53 and Blacks: 44. I punched it up a bit in ps curves. I also added a bit of blue saturation to the sky (becuase I couldn't help myself)

jjbong

Interesting results from some very different approaches.

Looking at the all of them, I noticed something that's affected fixes I've done of similar scenes. That is, some of the fixes change colors in the process. Notice especially the shirt on the man 2nd from the right, to a lesser extent the jacket on the woman 4th from the right, and to a much lesser extent the shirt on the man 2nd from the left.

In this shot, I don't think it's of much significance. I did some shots of a work day for a volunteer organization where everyone was wearing T-shirts (orange, with the organization's logo on it). Here changes were quite unwelcome, as everyone knew what the color was supposed to be.

pathfinder

That is one of the advantages of a strictly local editing like I used.

There are no changes anywhere except in the area of the shadowed faces.

Indeed, I did not even attempt to change the color of the faces, just the luminosity itself.

ziggy53

Here is my spin:

Layers using color to quickly select the areas to change (faces) and then painting/erasing on the quick mask. New layer via copy and then levels and curves, as well as more curves to correct color to a believable extent. Neat Image on the "face" layer, Flatten and use clone to do final touchup.

Full-res here:
http://ziggy53.smugmug.com/gallery/2769257#220247718-O-LB

jfriend

What do you think?

jfriend wrote:

I've got this image (given to me by someone else) that I need to fix for a local publication. Obviously, it would have benefited from some fill flash because of the strong shadows. But there is detail in the shadows if it can be pulled out.

Thanks for the various ideas on how to correct this and for taking the time to show me your results.

I guess I was hoping for some magic formula that would fix this without creating masks and doing a bunch of detail work, but I think you all confirmed that this is mostly just a brute force correction. So, using some of your ideas and a few of my own, this is what I came up with.

Please, tell me what you think of the result?

My end result followed this path. I doubt this is the simplest way to get to this result, but you all know how some of these corrections go. You try one thing, see where it leads, build on that some more and so on. So, my path is a little windy. Anyway, here's what I did:

• I started with a shadow/highlight adjustment to do an inital restore of some visible detail in the faces).
• That immediately changed way too much of the image so I realized I needed to block parts of it with a mask. I decided I wanted none of the effect in the background, all of the effect in the faces and about half the effect in the other shadows on the people. I wanted to see some detail in the faces, but I also wanted the shadows to still be realistic since it is a mid-day shot. So, I started with an inverse luminosity mask and then did a bunch of handwork on it.
• After that, I decided that the whole image needed a little contrast boost so I added a slight s-curve being careful not to lose my shadows again.
• Then, I did a slight global color tweak because the unmodified skin seemed a little blue.
• At this point, I was OK with the luminosity in the faces, but unhappy with the color - everything looked too red to me. So I did a selective color layer, added a little cyan to the reds and masked the whole effect to just the faces. Since there isn't much red elsewhere in the image, the facial masks could be fairly quick.
• Now, the faces looked a little washed out and flat. I decided that just the faces needed some more contrast without changing the color. Using the same facial mask, I steepened a curve right in the tonal areas of the faces and this really helped the reality of the faces as it got rid of the washed-out look.
• Lastly, I decided there was a bit too much noise in the faces from the deep shadows that had been pulled up. So, I did a bit of noise reduction, again using the facial mask so it only affected that part of the image.

I'm probably my own worst critic. If I see both of the images or toggle between the two, I think my retouch looks a bit fake, but if I only look at the retouch, I'm thinking it's not bad and folks who haven't studied the original won't know anything's up. What do you all think?

Here's how the retouch ended up:


What I started with:

jjbong

jfriend wrote:

Thanks for the various ideas on how to correct this and for taking the time to show me your results.

Please, tell me what you think of the result?

Looks pretty good.

jfriend wrote:

• That immediately changed way too much of the image so I realized I needed to block parts of it with a mask. I decided I wanted none of the effect in the background, all of the effect in the faces and about half the effect in the other shadows on the people. I wanted to see some detail in the faces, but I also wanted the shadows to still be realistic since it is a mid-day shot. So, I started with an inverse luminosity mask and then did a bunch of handwork on it.

Just curious why you picked the inverse luminosity mask. Did you try just a red channel? I looked at inverse luminosity and red channels from your original image, and red looked promising. I didn't have the patience to tyr to reproduce your work with this alternative. Just wondering how you landed here.

Anyway, great job.

jfriend

jjbong wrote:

Looks pretty good.


Just curious why you picked the inverse luminosity mask. Did you try just a red channel? I looked at inverse luminosity and red channels from your original image, and red looked promising. I didn't have the patience to tyr to reproduce your work with this alternative. Just wondering how you landed here.

Anyway, great job.

I would assume that the red channel would be a good place to start for faces, but I wasn't only trying to only target the faces. There are some pretty dark shadows down near the feet that I wanted to open up a little bit too and some of them are other colors like clothing. Since those aren't just skin, they don't necessarily work with a red channel mask. I also thought the full depth of shadows elsewhere on the clothing would look odd if I didn't reduce them a bit too.

To tell you the truth, the reverse luminosity mask was really only a starting point - I did a lot of painting on it to block out the background and lower the effect in places other than the faces.

pemmett

Not sure if it's too late but I had fun trying to fix this photo :-) here's the result.

Zanotti

I stuck it in I2E and pushed "process":

jfriend

Zanotti wrote:

I stuck it in I2E and pushed "process":

It looks a little oversharpened, but that's a pretty impressive improvement for essentially an automated fix.

susanbudge

Hi, I'm new to dgrin and it is my first post here. I hope it isn't too late to put in my take on this image.

I learnt something from Pathfinder about using the brush in soft light mode (thanks..another notch up that learning curve:D ) , but instead of painting freehand, I went to select - colour range - and from the drop down box chose shadows. I feathered the selection by 2 pixels and from there it was easy to paint quickly over all the shadows with the brush.

I did this on a duplicate layer so the opacity could be reduced if necessary. It has also lifted some shadows on the clothing and on the legs and feet.

Forgive my ignorance, but is the reverse luminosity mask that has been used by others just another way of selecting the shadows?

Hope this helps

Susan