help with obvious screwup

Atleast i will learn from my major mistake here. I had the camera meter on the black shirts and not their faces.

therefore they look like ghosts. If someone can PLEASE help me with how to edit these. i have 9 that i need to

retouch. i have tried curves, selective color, and color balance. but haven't gotten a good result. i'm asking

if you can fix this photo and explain to me what you did. i'm pretty positive that i will be able to do what you

did to all 9 of the photos as they all look a like. here is a small pic. and then also a link to the full res.

file. Thank you so much for anyone willing to help out. i truly appreciate it.

http://s19.photobucket.com/albums/b154/joppa36/?action=view&current=IMG_0244.jpg<div></div>

Try this (2 minutes):

 

Adjustment layer (curve): darken the image globally.

 

Select, Color range: keep clicking brighter part of the skin with the shift key held down, fuzziness 10-30, .

 

Adjustment layer (curve): darken the skin in RGB, adjust individual R, G, B curves to your liking.

you can also try the shadows/highlights controls (and play with mid-tones a little to lighten the shirts to see what that does).

cb<div></div>

ok-it didn't come out the way I had hoped but you get the idea-try shadows/highlights. cb

Nobuya, Wow! thank you. that worked great! charles thank you as well. i love this site, my wife couldn't believe i got answers that quick and when i showed her the results of what i was just taught she was amazed. thanks again!<div></div>

I used the Raw convertor in CS3 to I used recovery for the highlights. I used vibrance for color, and punched up the blacks

and used the fill light. I also lowered the exposure.<div></div>

You are welcome : )

 

If you don't like the guy's reddish left hand (I don't) , use the marquee around the hand, and repeat the color

range > adjustment layer curve steps.

Duplicate layer

 

Desaturate top layer

 

Invert top layer, set to soft light, at 50 percent opacity

 

Selected his hand and desaturated it -33

 

Selective color, choose reds -30 on black slider, choose blacks +10 black slider

 

Curves very small adjustment on shadow end to taste<div></div>

This wasn't necessarily a screw up. If you look at this from an 'expose to the right' point of view, one could argue that you

deliberately over-exposed the image by a stop or two to minimise noise in the shadow areas.

 

Plenty of information on the web around this theory.

 

Pete

My attempt via LR2 --

 

Recovery 46

 

Fill light 29

 

Contrast +19

 

Clarity +9

 

Tone curve adjustments: Highlights -51, Lights -49, Darks +13

 

Red Hue +53

 

Minor Vignette added<div></div>

another simple way is to duplicate your background layer, set the blending mode to multipy, then add a layer mask and selectively paint off the dark shirts to bring back the details<div></div>

Curves layer to darken midtones, clip shadows to black.

Second curves layer to darken face.

Third curves layer setting color balance by clicking gray dropper on black shirt (warms up the image)<div></div>