Please help me with this photo

[ryangautier]

http://www.photo.net/photos/ryangautier

 

 

This is a photo that was taken at my very good friends wedding. There was

unfortunately a lot of haze behind us. This is probably one of the better

photos (because I am not photogenic) that we have taken. I have been trying

to fix it in PS, but I am very limited (knowledge wise) to get this done.

 

Any care to help me out and then tell me how you fixed it in PS?

 

I tried to fix the exposure and darken and then mask the photo to bring out

the highlights, but to no avail.

 

Anyone want to help me out with this to make it look real nice?

 

 

Thanks

Ryan

[mr. sullen]

http://retouchpro.com/

[leicaglow]

Ryan, the biggest problem that I see is you have flare and there is lost data. It's hard to recover what's not there without spending a good deal of time with it. You could boost the contrast and darken it a bit, especially in the upper right area, but you're going to have to play with it in PS.

[tomhansonphotography]

One simple way to cut some of the haze is simply changing your RGB level adjustments. It may be too simple for some but it works well. Good luck.<div></div>

[ole_hjalmar_kristensen]

A small amount of unsharp masking with a relatively large radius can fix such problems to some extent. Here is one attempt.<div></div>

[ole_hjalmar_kristensen]

An another one, this time combined with a contrast-reducing mask and some adjustment with curves.<div></div>

[giggles]

Here is my play with the image.<div></div>

[ryangautier]

Thanks for the posts guys. I have definitely played around with it for sure (but know there are a TON of better people than me out there).

 

I like a few of them.

 

Ole: Can you tell me what you mean by contrast reducing mask...

 

I figure I might be able to use some of them all combined and get a pretty good example.

 

Anyone else ?

 

Thanks

Ryan

[thomas_rutter]

<img src="http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/8505/ryangel3.jpg" alt="">

<p>

http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/8505/ryangel3.jpg

<p>

I created a duplicate of the background layer and applied a gaussian blur of radius about 88. I inverted that layer and set its mode to 'Linear Light'. I set its opacity around 25%.

<p>

I created a curves layer for darkening the dark areas and I applied a mask to this layer with a fairly large brush so it mainly just operated on the top right of the image and the spot between their heads.

<p>

I created a color balance layer to subtly adjust the colour balance.

<p>

I created a master curves layer to give contrast to the whole thing, particular because the second layer made the contrast pretty flat.

[rainer_t]

My attempt.

 

- Curves to adjust black tones.

 

- Noise reduction. (Eventually not required if you work on the original file, but the sample you supplied is compressed quite a bit. The NR step reduces some of the artefacts).

 

- Local contrast enhancement (USM with r=25 a=20% th=0) and slight sharpening (USM with r=0.3 a=50% th=0)

 

- Crop to relevant parts.<div></div>

[ole_hjalmar_kristensen]

> Ole: Can you tell me what you mean by contrast reducing mask...

 

It's more or less the same as Thomas Rutter described above, except that I did not do any manual work. The idea is that you create a new layer which contains a desaturated and inverted version of the image. You then blur this with a fairly large radius, and set the mode of this layer to 'Overlay'. The resulting image will have less contrast and typically a flatter histogram, because we have made the dark areas lighter and the light areas darker, so this layer is a contrast reducing mask. The overlay acts as a neutral filter with variable density, if you like. By adjusting with the curves tool, you can regain local contrast without excessive global contrast. This trick is essentially a kind of unsharp masking, and indeed very close to the way you would do unsharp masking in a darkroom.

[gdw]

I do not use PS but the same tools are available. Most of the flair was taken care of with an adjustment in levels, just pull the black slider over to where the suit and the dress are actually black. I did apply a small amount of additional contrast limited to your face while backing off on saturation in the same area to compensate. Sorry I had to get rid of the post (clone tool) and add a little color to the sky<div></div>

[gdw]

Sorry, after seeing it posted, I decided it would look better without the cars on the left and with your hand in your pocket (clone tool or PS rubber stamp).<div></div>

[daniel_howell]

Just happened to catch this one...

 

While a lot of people are using contrast adjustments, etc, your best bet might be to simply use a gradient mask on the top right side of the image. The contrast in some of the above images really gets a little heavy. A gradient mask would allow you to adjust only the area of the image that has the flare while maintaining the acceptable contrast in the rest of the image. Think of it like a graduated filter of sort. So, how to? All of this is Photoshop CS2:

 

1) Open the image

2) Open the layer in the "Quick Mask" mode

3) Use the little used "Gradient Tool" to draw a mask (think of masking tape - keeps the adjustments from going where you don't want them to go) over the area of the image you DON'T want to be affected. You can play with different types of gradient shapes and settings at the top of the widow in the options palette.

4) Exit the "Quick Mask" mode

5) Go to "Image Adjustments" and select "brightness and contrast"

6) Adjust it until it is acceptable to your taste (Tip: make the "marching ants" go away by hitting "Ctrl-H" on PC or "Apple-H" on a Mac [i think... I use pcs]

7) After you have it where you want it, you can deselect the selection and you should be finished.

 

ALSO- As long as you don't deselect you can continue editing the specified area. Just play with it.

 

Hope this helps.