I shot this photo earlier today and made a serious mistake positioning my flash. Could someone please help me remove the neck splitting shadow on the lady in the back?


If you need a few more Mp try http://palmettoportraits.com/temp/web_help.jpg

Regards


Mark

Hi There

I have Elements but I’m sure you can translate to Photoshop. I separated the luminosity channel. Then with curves, set to luminosity mode and a selection I lightened the dark area in question to save as much detail as I could. I then added sampled color from the face and using levels and Hue/saturation I equalized any small differences in color.

Butch

Ummm... did some dodging (shadows, low opacity), did some healing brush work from other skin samples (mostly replace, colour and luminosity settings) gradually brought out correct colour from an eye dropper sample and painting it at low opacity using mostly 'colour' and 'luminosity' brush settings. Recontructed necklace and some shading that looked unnatural and painted a subtle blur here and there to even out skin tone. This all worked fine on this low res example but may be harder to pull off at higher res. If you are still stuck maybe posting a cropped down portion with just her head and shoulders in best quality/size would be useful.

Oops! Can't see for looking :rolleyes: Just noticed your link hehe.

That is a harsh shadow. Perhaps you can get a nice result with some cloning, which is what I did here at a low opacity as you gradually move your way down her neck till you get a smooth transition. I accidently cloned over a necklace she was wearing.

Might just be a nice backyard, but looks like a golf course in the bg. They might be sitting about 150 yards from the green. The water is a hazard off the tee.

Anyway, gentle cloning is one way and it would be pretty simple.

Mig

I used a combination of Shadow/Highlight adjustment layers and the clone tool.

Syd

I used curves and a bit unsharp mask.

Hi,

I used:

* Shadow/Highlight Adjustment Layer

* Selected and copied the dark area on Mom's neck, Ctrl+J pasted it on a new Layer, Ctrl+I inverted it, set the new Layer's blending to Soft Light and adjusted Opacity.

* Still working on the selected area, Levels, Hue/Saturation and Brightenss/Contrast to blend it in with the rest of the image...

Here (http://xoomer.alice.it/southern_cross/RP.htm) is the full size B&A ....

****

Used shadow highlight like everyonr else. but then tried the History brush set to screen mode and at very low opacity (5%) and about 40-50% brush flow, over shadow area, just to see how it would work.
I don't think it looks too bad!

Peter

Flora, Nice Job

Ray

I masked out the shadow areas on the neck and arm, and on a new layer set to screen mode @ 80% i dropped in a neautral skin color from the better lit areas of her neck. basically did same thing for dress. just dropped in a blue that worked.

then cleaned up a bit with a cloning layer.

one thing i noticed is when i save for web, my image gets really saturated...and starts to look blotchy...but not the case on my working file.

KR1156,
What do you mean by "dropped in a neautral skin color from the better lit areas of her neck"

"dropped in a neautral skin color from the better lit areas of her neck"

I just basically used my eye dropper tool to pick up a color in the neck area where there was no shadow interference. Neautral meaning midtone, not a spot to light or a spot too dark, somewhere in the middle.

*when you make a new layer and drop a new color on an area, play with the different layer modes.

Hope that helped.

OK...so you used the dropper tool to select the proper color, then you used the paint bucket tool to "drop" the color onto the new layer?

after i use the eye dropper tool to set my color, i then hit option>delete to fill the area with the color. I work on a mac only, i dont know the PC keys, sorry. (i dont like using the paint bucket tool)

then you basically want to mask that color over the affected area as neat as possible.

Thanks Ray!!! :pleased: