The attached image is in my opinion overexposed. I am using Photoshop CS and have tried several ways of correcting the overexposure. Unfortunately when I correct the overexposure at the top of the picture the bottom, especially the shadow at the feet becomes much too dark. Any suggestions on how to improve this picture? Thanks in advance.
GC

Try using an adjustment layer on top of a duplicate of the image and then adding a mask to it to only bring out the adjustments you wanted.

Open your image
duplicate the background layer
go to the bottom of the layer menu and click on the half black/white circle and select whichever adjustment you were using before: levels, curves, etc.
Make your adjustments with that and then click on the "add layer mask" button at the bottom of the layer pallette (looks like a box with a circle in the middle)
click on the mask that you just created to select it in the layer menu
select brush
default colours of b&w
depending on how your system is set up you should be able to paint on the mask and reveal or hide portions of the image that were adjusted.

Looking at what you think is over exposed I would Make the adjustment for the over-exposure, turn the mask black to hide the adjustment and then go in and "paint" your over-exposure adjustment back in with white on the adjustment layer. You can then adjust opacity and all that. Total control.

All that said, I'm sure somebody has a simple one click method that gets the job done. Something about PS that continual blows me away: the number of ways to get something done and end up with good results no matter how you do it.

Have fun!

Hiya,

In my opinion it's not overexposed. My initial thought was underexposed. Possibly the wrong metering setting for such a photo but never mind.
I've included the before and after histograms so you can see the difference. Also the last image is shown with byro's clipping indicator applied. There is virtually none ;) .

I applied the shadow/highlight tool as shown. Then colour balanced using the curves and resized and sharpened (as it was a bit pixilated visually at the posted size). Re-touching the original would be much better. Just a quick attempt as it's late here in scotland..

cheers

Here's a method I've used for overexposed images, and to get a more balanced exposure:

o First look at the color channels and find the one that has the best overall exposure. For your photo, I picked the green channel.

o Add a Channel Mixer adjustment layer, check the Monochrome option box, then set the chosen channel to 100% and the others to 0% (in this case, I set red=0% green=100% blue=0%)

o Set the Channel Mixer layer mode to Luminosity

o Adjust the Channel Mixer layer opacity and/or chosen channel percentage to taste

- Kurt

I think you're main problem is you need some fill-flash. I tried making a duplicate layer, desaturating it, making a negative, then setting the blend mode to overlay. For your photo, this is too extreme, so I then applied a curve to the negative layer to tone it down--I used an inverted S-curve. Threw in a color adjustment layer on top of the whole thing for good measure (reduced the reds slightly).

Resultant image is attached. I also attached a picture of the layer stackup FYI.

Bart

Nacoya is right. The area of interest, i.e. the face, is underexposed. There are a lot of blown highlights, but I suggest you adjust the tones for the face and let the rest fall where it will. Reconstructing detail in the highlights would be possible (not real detail, but plausible), but it's a more difficult technique.

Pierre

Just a quick retouch using basic methods in photoshop.
1/ make curves adjustment using black from football top, and white from blown white area in photo.
2/ run shadow/highlights adjustment at default setting
3/ run through neat image on auto profile, and setting sharpening to 45%

Job done ;)
Not a massive improvement, but does seem to give the photo some life :pleased: Also had to compress the image quite a bit to make it below 100k :cry:

My two cents,
1. I duplicated the original, and used screen as the blending mode and dropped the opacity to 57%.
2. Did a curves adjustment using the top of the white helmet as the white point and the black of the shoe as the blackpoint, and a pretty grubby knee as the grey point.
3. Upped the saturation a little under hue saturation and lightness.

Okay, took a stab at it as well. Subtle, but based on what you said in your original post, gcloud, I mostly dealt with the top of the pic and the blown out sections that were almost white. I wasn't able to restore too much detail to them but did tone them down a bit.

BTW, I used the method that I described in my original response.

Whoa!!! That didn't go well at all. The attached pic in my previous post is the same as the dl'd one. Here comes my actual attempt:

Nice result Smiley Guy, seems to take out a lot of the blown white areas in the hair :bigthmb:

Have you tried copying and pasting the image atop itself and using the soft light filtre? That normally works well for me.

Maureen :happy:

Lots of good ideas here, but CS under Image>Adjustments has a thing called shadow/highlites that is made to take care of just this kind of problem. A matter of moving some sliders around, and if you play with it for a bit, you can make some pretty good adjustments.