Help request; love the photo but I don't know how to fix it's issues.

[shaun_martin3]

First of all; a general thanks for all the info I've learnt in here. Still plenty more for me to lean but I've got a start.

 

After shooting film for many years I had to bow out of shooting events etc as digital took over ~2002/03. After a many year

hiatus (from photography altogether) I finally picked up a D200 in July of last year, giving myself a month to try and figure it

out prior to going to Europe on my honeymoon, I should have spent more time so I could have gotten the picture right the

first time but alas I did not, and didn't know enough to check the histogram. On replay on the lcd screen it looked fine, I

should have bracketed not to mention set exposure compensation at -2.0 or so to compensate for the bright sky.

 

What I have is an overexposed washed out picture of the Eiffel tower that I'm trying to save in order to print and give to my

wife on our first Anniversary.

 

Help, suggestions etc would be ideal, even if someone's willing to take a crack at corrections and let me know how they've

done it. I'd tweaked this image 7 ways from Sunday many times over, and I'm still not happy with the results.

 

Thanks in advance for any assitance!

 

The picture:<div></div>

[victorwei]

I'm on vacation right now and I don't have Lightroom installed in the labtop I have with me. Otherwise, I would have tried to tame down the highlights in that program for you to see if it would help. If you have Lightroom, try reducing the exposure first, then sliding the recovery and fill light to the right and then the highlight to the left. Hopefully that will make a difference.

[tonmestrom]

had a quick go in CS3<div></div>

[User_503771]

You didn't mention whether you shot it in RAW, and what software you'll be using to try to fix it.

 

Anyway, if you shot it in RAW -- or if you can convert it to RAW -- then you can open it in Camera Raw and play with the sliders there. Keep in mind that "exposure" is just that; "brightness" will have its greatest impact in the middle values.

 

Once you've got the initial main adjustments done there, then use some adjustment layers in PS for levels and curves to tweak it a little more.

 

Regardless of all that, you might want to consider printing it pretty much as-is, maybe with a little exposure adjustment. There's a lot of nice luminosity to it, nice bright sunny day feel to it that could be lost if you reduced the exposure too much. If you don't print it real big, then the parts where you've nearly lost highlight detail won't stand out too much -- but even those parts hold some detail, so you're not actually all that badly off to begin with.

 

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that IMHO if you do very much to adjust this photo, you'll end up doing stuff *to* it rather than *for* it.

 

Try printing it out at a few different sizes with some minor adjustments, see how it goes. I'll bet she'll love it regardless.

[shaun_martin3]

Thanks for the advice guys, Truly appreciated.

 

Ton, that's a good one, I was having the same problem with the fade to cyan in the upper left corner. I might use your image at the end of this, (i'll redo the contrast mask in the trees though).

 

Michael, sorry it was Large Jpeg format. I was travelling for two weeks with only a 4gb card (idiot I know). Since then I've picked up two other 8 gb cards and I shoot almost exclusively in RAW. I have CS3 extended and lightroom 2.0beta (and 1.4), most of my attempts have been made in lightroom as CS3 is a little daunting right now. I'll post up what I have so far in a bit.

[tonmestrom]

Shaun, Michael is right. Although it's a quick fix I've "done" something to it, especially in the top left corner as you've noticed, you might see some posterisation if you print it large. That you can easily replace yourself though.

[shaun_martin3]

Here's an attempt, I think I might start over as though the sky was very blue that day, this almost looks much too saturated.<div></div>

[shaun_martin3]

Here's another attempt, a bit brigther than the last. I belive it's a better compromise.

[mendonphoto]

I know there is some sentimental value in hanging a picture that you took yourself, and if you are more interested in the sentiment than the actual picture, then go ahead and use the one that you've taken.

 

But, there are so many pictures of the Eiffel tower, and any one of them would probably evoke memories of your trip just as well as one that you took. I'd personally rather give a great picture that someone else took as a gift than one I'd taken but wasn't happy with.

 

I can sympathize with you on not getting the pictures you wanted on what may or may not be a once-in-a-lifetime trip. It happens to us all. It's happened to me several times in Paris. Luckily, I live close enough that I've been able get back enough to get a few I was happy with.

[david.elliott]

Well, here is my go at it.

 

I'm having problems with the top left corner. I'd have to upgrade to LR2 to do a localized adjustment on it (or use photoshop and

some layers / masking).

 

I took a bit of a different tack than Ton did, so it looks somewhat different.

 

I cooled down the picture a bit (white balance adjustment), dropped the exposure by almost 3/4 of a stop, maxed the recovery

slider, lowered the brightness slightly, added some clarity, fiddled with the tone curve a bit, adjusted the blues, and applied some

sharpening. All edits performed in Lightroom.

 

Hope this helps a bit.

 

Happy Anniversary!

[david.elliott]

Here is an alternate version with greener leaves and a sky that is a deeper blue.

[jammer_jammer]

Here's my shot at it.<div></div>

[roger_smith4]

One suggestion- you guys should work on the fringing before changing colors- otherwise you're changing the fringe color when you move the blues around. I find PTLens useful for this (if I'm not editing in Lightroom).

 

I'd use the recovery slider in Lightroom to try to bring the brights back a bit.

[charles_watson]

If you look at your channels, R/G/B, you can find that the red channel held a significantly higher amount of

highlight detail than the Green or Blue channels. Copying this channel to a new layer and setting the blend mode

to "Luminoisity" helped quite significantly. Well, it's five in the morning and I'm on the phone will the ol'

girlfriend, so I haven't really put any effort into creating the masks. If you want to download the .PSD yourself

and spend some time with it, I left all layers intact. For reference, this edit only took five or six minutes.

<br>

<br>

<img src="http://onlinephototutorials.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/eiffel-tower-bw.jpg" alt="Eiffel Tower in

B&W" />

<br>

<br>

<img src="http://onlinephototutorials.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/eiffel-tower-color.jpg" alt="Eiffel Tower in

Color" />

<br>

<br>

Here's the layered .PSD file for both the B&W version and the color version. Once again, I DIDN'T PUT ANY EFFORT

IN BRUSHING THE LAYER MASKS. Download the .PSD and try it yourself. I've resized the .PSD so that it's not too

hard on my bandwith, but you can drag and drop the adjusment layers into the full-sized image, and resize them to

your liking. Hope I helped!

<br>

<br>

http://onlinephototutorials.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/eiffel%20tower.psd