I'm stump with this photo (first attachment)! :sad: Tried everything I know to adjust the brightness and contrast.

The last attempt (second attachment), I converted the duplicate file to lab mode and adjusted the lightness. Then copied the image back to the rgb original, lowered opacity to 70%. Still not satisfied with the result.

I'd appreciate all the help...thanks.

Soleah, your green channel was severly underexposed with no detail in a large area. I used the channel mixer to replace it then used a Hue / Sat adjustment to adjust the color to where the skin looked normal and door in the background was more neutral. Since I do not have a reference to go by, I may be somewhat off where I left it. The image you uploaded is very pixelated due to jpg overcompression. I assume that you have a higher quality original and therefore won't have those artifacts on your version.
Regards,
Murray

I did a shadow/highlights adjustment, made 2 dupe layers; one mask layer for woman and child and one blured with a gradient mask to give some depth and kill off colour noise in the corrected shadows. Also added a warming filter layer with same gradent mask to correct cyan colour cast. It is a bit rough and ready but I hope you get the idea.

mistermonday, I didn't bother to look at the individual channels, I missed that step. Thanks.

littlecoo, does the shadow/highlight adj layer have an equivalent step in PS7? I also want to try your idea.

hi soleah, i used level/curve/hue adjustments -- i tried to get rid of the red/orange skin tone.

I tried to keep the original colors...

Hmmm...levels and curves adjustments with some masking esp of the woman and child is the closest equivelent I can think of. Sorry about that, I never possessed ps7 so I do take the capabilities of CS and CS2 for granted... not knowing any different.

Hi,

soleah,

haven't 'seen' you in a while... How are you?

I don't know if this is in the right direction ... To lift the shadows, I selected them and used a single Levels Adjustment Layer set to Screen on the selection... (the immediate result after this procedure in Attachment 2) .... Let me know if you'd like more details... :happy:

P.S. I changed the colour of the floor because I saw you had done it .. but after brightening the image the floor colour is burgundy ...

Hi Littlecoo,

great idea for the mask!!! Thanks for sharing!! :pleased:

Unfortunately the great Shadow/Highlight Adjustment Layer Option is available from PS CS upwards only ...

nice work, all.

i saw this image and because of what i'd been experimenting with in filter forge, i decided i could make a filter that might do the job here. it basically splits the foreground (read: lights) and the background (read: darks) and then treats each separately as if they were different channels. you could probably do this in filtermeister too.

anyways, i tried several variations, trying not to move the threshhold so far as to cause parts to fade to translucent. it worked fairly well. here's 3 versions.

craig

Thanks everyone. Now I have a lot of options. :happy: :happy: :happy:

Flora :wavey:. I've been busy but I'm fine. When I come here, I just lurk most of the time. You know, most of my experiments ended up with a burgundy floor like your 3rd attachment. I remember, the floor coloring is more like your 2nd attachment. I'd appreciate it if you can give me details on that one. Thanks.

Craig, I don't know filter forge or filtermeister yet. Seeing your atttachment, these might be worth looking into.

soleah,

filtermeister requires coding skill. filter forge doesnt. and the filter i used for those images was made in about 10 minutes; at least the simple version was. i'm working on a revision for that filter hoping to make it a more exact thing and to perhaps even add background blurring and hue/sat alterations to foreground and background. it's an interesting program and this was the first filter i'd made specifically for retouching and restoration.

if i get it better i'll post the results :)

craig

here's another way you can do this without any filters. i posted a similar technique in this thread: http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13973

on yours, i duped the original layer

added contrast/brightness adj layer and raised it till i could see everything i wanted to see well. that made it 80 bright and 40 contrast.
i then cut those numbers in half.

clicked on the duped layer and did a histogram adjustment. the original image had a really bad signature in the very lows. i spread the entire image out until things looked much better.

i then adjusted the bright/contrast layer way down. 25/3

the image had picked up a lot of extra saturation in all this so i added a hue/sat adjustment layer and simply cut the saturation down on the master level.

and just for good measure i added a very small amount of clarify to the duped layer.

this seems to be a pretty good technique for balancing images, especially the luminosity.

craig

I tried something else to lighten the background. I used a soft spotlight filter effect with a gradient mask to even it out.

I'm far from an expert with Photoshop. I used NeatImage (100% Chrominance filter), Shadow/Highlights adjustment, Hue/Saturation (master sat. -30), Masked the upper right 1/3 to boost mid-tone with Levels, Cropped to remove some of the problems around the outside.

littlecoo, nice job :)

craig

Hi,

great job everybody!! :thumbsup:

soleah,

so glad to hear you are fine!!!

Sorry to get back to you so late... :o:

Here is what I did:

Selected the shadows in your image.


With the selection still active, I created a Levels Adjustment Layer (didn't tweak any value yet..) and set the blending of this A.L. to screen.


Double clicked on the A.L. to open the Levels dialog box and there I tweaked the values as in Attachment 1


If needed, you can refine the A.L. mask by activating it and pressing Ctrl+L to open a further Levels dialog box ... Attachment 2


Once happy with the exposure, I selected the burgundy floor and surrounding burgundy areas, strongly feathered the selection, and used a Hue/Saturation A.L. to tweak Hue and Saturation.


In my opinion, the reds in the main subjects were a bit oversaturated, so, I used Selective Colors to correct that ... finally I lightly sharpened the image... That's all I did...

Hope this helps ....

P.S. ...always nice to see you!

Thank you so much, Flora

I was stuck on the shadow problem that I didn't even address the skin yet. You fixing that was a bonus.

Restored a lot of photos to this date but never once tinkered with the output levels. :ditsy: I feel such a novice.

Thanks again. You're an absolute angel!

:happy: ...always following your posts.

Hi Flora,
You said "To lift the shadows, I selected them "
Am wondering how you did this selection.
Cinderella

What an interesting technique

Hi Cinderella,

You said "To lift the shadows, I selected them "
Am wondering how you did this selection.Ctrl+Alt+~ > to select the Luminosity,
Ctrl+Shift+I > to invert the selction ...

My following post got only a single response, so I'll use the corrections here to illustrate my points.

http://retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?p=127341#post127341

I often use Flora's method of Screen (or Multiply) blending and painting over the layer mask for tonal correction. But as pointed out, the floor color becomes distorted. To correct that color would need another adjustment step.

I find Kraellin's first correction losing a lot of contrast that is in the original. To recover that contrast would also need another adjustment step.

My list of tonal adjustment methods all seem to have one or both ot these problems. For each image, I have to cycle through different methods until I find one that works the best for that image. Hence, my question remains:

"Is this a case of "you can't have it both ways", or is there a better method?"

I do not mean to be critical about the posted corrections here. I can't do it any better and my comments are just for illustration purposes.

Hi hpycmpr,

...hope I've understood your question:

you wish to know if there is a method to adjust exposure without losing definition and correcting colours in one go .... right?

The only option (in PS) I know of, that gets close to that, is the Shadow/Highlight Adjustment .... (available only from PS CS upwards) ...

The Shadow/Highlight Adjustment gives you control of:

* Amount,
* Tonal Width,
* Radius
for correcting shadows and highlights...

* Color Correction (you can only increase or decrease the overall Saturation, though)
* Midtone Contrast.

It's really a great Tool, but, sometimes, the colours have still to be corrected by means of other Adjustments...

But as pointed out, the floor color becomes distorted. To correct that color would need another adjustment step. ... As for this point, however, I don't think that the brightening manipulation was the cause of the colour distortion ... I think that the discoloration was already there, hidden by the shadows, and it simply became visible when the shadows were lifted ....

The method I used for this restoration, was limited to the shadows which I had previously selected ... (the reason behind this selection was exactly to not lose definition in the lighter parts of the image) ....

It gave me good results for the definition (particularly after refining the mask) and I've tried to correct the colours as well by tweaking the individual channels. Wasn't happy with the results I was getting, so I opted for a completely different colour correction Tool ... thus adding a second step to the procedure...

is there a better method? ... I have been working, on and off, on an alternative method which gives better control over the colours ... but it is also limited to either shadows or highlights separately and it also consists of two steps ...

Flora, thanks for the response.

I stand corrected about the color cast. It is indeed hidden in the shadow in the original.

The S&H tool works well, but I find the default b/w points too drastic. For example, if b/w points are set prior to running S&H, these points will have to be reset again.

After much researching, I found the following excellent article about the pros and cons of each tool for shadow and highlight correction. It addresses exactly what I was looking for, namely, how each tool can correct something at the expense of losing something else. The author refers to these as "expansion" and "contraction". Most books and tutorials only talk about how each tool can achieve a desired correction, but fail to mention the negative side effects.

http://ronbigelow.com/articles/shadow/shadow&highlight1/shadow-highlight1.htm

As I suspected, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Or maybe you can, if you have two cakes, i.e. merging two images as described by the author.