shadow re-touching

[santer36]

i took 135 pictures today for some relatives. about 100 of them have some

nasty shadows in the from the sun being behind them. (i am buying a reflector

very soon now) anyway...i was wondering if someone would mind taken the time to

"fix" one or both of these as examples AND please tell me how they did this.

i don't even know if this is something possible to do or not. i have PS7, paint

shop7 and canons software DPP. i would love anyone to help. thanks you. here

are the two pics. if you don't want to take the time to actually show me a

"fixed" image, maybe explaining what i can do. NOT what i should have done

before the pic was taken. i do know what i should have done but lighting isn't

in the budget yet and the reflector i have doesn't sit well without a stand or a

person to hold it!

 

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b154/joppa36/0100.jpg

 

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b154/joppa36/0054.jpg

 

thank you!

[Uhooru]

Not sure they're that fixable. When you try to add light to the faces you will get nothing but noise. Anyways, just for laughs, try your dodge tool in PS7, you will see what I mean.But before you do anything, create a copy of your background and work on that background copy so you can always have the original layer there.

 

Another more sophisticated method is to add a new layer going to layer >overlay with the add gray scale checked. On your tool kit on the left near the bottom where the forground/background color little overlapping squares are click on the little square on left corner so one square is white, one black. Than click on the white square. Than click on your brush tool. size it using the bracket keys one way makes it smaller, one larger, or right click on the mouse. At the approropriate size, now set the opacity level on the top bar, you'll see it there. Set it around 12 or so, just to start. Brush the area's you want to lighten. You can over lighten and then on the layer pallatte choose for that layer "soft light" and play with the layer opacity level to see if you can get it to where you might be able to use it.

 

I think no matter what you do, given the first example I looked at, you are just going to have a mask of noise with no detail because the shots are just improperly exposed. Live and leaarn. Good luck

[Uhooru]

You might have better luck with the second one as thee is some detail in the dark areas.

[hugh_croft]

In Photoshop 9, I boosted the shadows, using the Shadow Highlight tool. You can buy a plugin called Photowiz Lightmachine which will do the same thing. It works with PS 7.

[jimstrutz]

I used Curves and just raised the darks while holding down the lights. You have to go too far for the first one. I think it is pretty far gone. The second one comes out better.<div></div>

[terry_spade]

I made a copy, converted the copy to monochrome, did a gaussian blur of radius 2 (you will need a higher radius number with a larger file) inverted the monochrome to a negative. Copied the negative monochrome and pasted it over the color image as a layer. Set the monochrome layer mode to soft light. I also used selective color to tone down the red in the skin tones. I choose the reds adjusted black to -50.<div></div>

[terry_spade]

Did the same as above on this one. Except I didn?t adjust skin tones.<div></div>

[ronald_moravec1]

Shadow/ highlight control in photoshop cs2. You can do the same with curves if you raise the lower left

 

Settings were perhaps higher than you want.

 

Fill flash is easier than a reflector<div></div>

[ronald_moravec1]

Used H/S control again and the dodged the faces the 50% grey layer in overlay mode.

 

Then I selected the boys face and raised brightness and contrast.

 

Flatten, resize to 72 ppi and 510 pixels wide, and smart sharpen<div></div>

[ronald_moravec1]

Here I used the luminosity mask feature. ALT CTRL and ~ all at the same time. It makes selections based on luminosity with everything brighter than 50%. Then I inverted the selection- select invert.

 

With the selection active, make an adjustment layer- levels.

 

Move the middle slider on the top row to the left to decrease gamma.

 

Flatten<div></div>

[ronald_moravec1]

Learn to burn dodge using grey mask 50 %. Then paint with black and white.

 

Link

 

http://www.bridgesweb.org/NewFiles/tut_graymask.html

[mpd]

I have both CS3 and Lightzone. Here is my correction using Lightzone.

[santer36]

EVERYONE, thank you very much! these simple steps actually taught me ALOT more than just the shadows on the faces. Ronald a special thanks for that link. i tried everyones approach and i am able to save alot of these pictures. next problem is the noise in some of them. i have an action for getting rid of noise BUT, of course it doesn't work. haha. thanks again everyone!

i love p.n!

[Uhooru]

I have to say that Terry Spade's treatment really worked the best for me, and I stand corrected. All of these certainly improved the image.

 

I usually use an overlay layer, but Terry's method really looks pretty good.

[Uhooru]

Ronald, is inverting the luminance mask somewhat similar to what Terry did only without the soft light blending mode?

[toronto photographer]

how come those people are yellow. This should be your first step-COLOR CORRECTION. Then adjust the levels then use noise ninja to fix noise issues. Then before you finish-sharpen.