Can this be rescued ? New to the forum. Any help would be appreciated.

Cygnus, welcome to Retouch Pro. Yes the image is recoverable. Here is a quick fix where I took the image into LAB color space nd added a new layer with its blend mode changed to color and painted over the blown out areas. Sorry if I did not get the skin tone correct but a simple Hue / saturation adjustment can shift it toward red or green.
Regards, Murray

welcome, cygnus.

difficult image.

i duplicated the original layer and added a blend mode of multiply and then duplicated this again, leaving the same blend mode on that layer. that brought back some color and depth but it was very yellow.

i selected the face and added some airbrush of the same yellow to the bright white areas just enough to make it not white. i then added a hue/sat adjustment layer of hue/sat and moved the yellows more towards the red.

i also added a small bit of clarify to give some shadowing and definition.

after all that it was mostly new layers with more airbrush on each, one for more color, one for shadows, and one for touch-ups.

somewhere in there i think i also added a color balance adjustment layer.

there was also a lot of push for adding light amounts of color to areas still a bit too white and for smoothing up transitions.

there were many, many steps here, so you're only getting a rough, quick explanation of all this.

at one point i thought maybe it would be better to simply take it to black and white and colorize the whole from scratch, but finally decided against that. though, it could be done.

I use Photoshop Elements 3 so don't know what the equivalent is in other versions, but I duplicated the layer and set the blending mode of the top layer to "Linear burn" - makes quite a difference on my monitor.

Margaret

Didn't take much care in this but ... The blue channel has most detail in the face so duplicated original, apply image blue channel normal blend mode to the original and set layer blend to luminosity. Convert to LAB color and apply curves adjustment layer, steeping the lightness layer to get more contrast in the skin. Play around with A & B channels a bit to change color, then surface blur of 3px to both A and B. Unsharp mask 200,1,0 on lighness layer.

This was all aimed at the skin. didn't bother with lips eyes or hair at all.

Still more could be done if original image was better quality.

I took a stab and added an orange-ish fill layer over the image that I then set to multiply with about 50% opacity. Next I added a mask to the fill layer and very quickly (sloppily) masked out the background. I also de-noised the image to maker her skin seem a little glowy, smooth.

Cygnus, welcome to Retouch Pro. Yes the image is recoverable. Here is a quick fix where I took the image into LAB color space nd added a new layer with its blend mode changed to color and painted over the blown out areas. Sorry if I did not get the skin tone correct but a simple Hue / saturation adjustment can shift it toward red or green.
Regards, Murray
One of the many tricks possible in LAB and no where else. However, if before you convert to LAB you first dupe the blue channel and then copy it into a layer in luminosity mode, painting in your color layer underneath will provide some needed detail. Lots of detail often gets hidden away in the blue/yellow channel. From this point, there's enough information that curves adjustments could bring things to a desirable conclusion.

I'm a first time poster here and have a very dumb question. Can someone point me to the instructions on how to post a photo? In my previous lurkings I've seen them, and now can't seem to dig 'em up. I'm hoping to post my try on the "too much flash" thread so I can get criticism of my newbie skills.

Thank you!

Sally

Hi Sally

Welcome

After hitting REPLY go down to "Additional Options" ATTACH FILES hit MANAGE Attachments and from there you will get to upload window. BROWSE will allow you to select an image from your computer and once you see the image file in the window click UPLOAD. After the image is uploaded you will see a comment. That's it.

Hope it works.

I'm a first time poster here and have a very dumb question. Can someone point me to the instructions on how to post a photo? In my previous lurkings I've seen them, and now can't seem to dig 'em up. I'm hoping to post my try on the "too much flash" thread so I can get criticism of my newbie skills.

Thank you!

Sally


Hi Sally,

Flora has written some instructions on posting Images to the forums Here (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/image-help/7933-attaching-files-images-threads-posts.html)

Hi Cygnus,

Did a very quick and "dirty" job on your photo.

Duplicated image, set new layer to Multiply mode, reduced layer opacity.

New levels adj layer and tweaked a bit.

New layer set to Normal mode, sampled colour from pic and painted over blown areas. Blurred with Gaussian Blur and reduced opacity of layer. Finally added a bit of noise to add texture.

Welcome to RetouchPRO, cygnus. :bigthmb:

Just the sort of challenge I like - difficult but not impossible.
As Tpage pointed out the blue channel has preserved the details. However the problem using the blue channel is that is has too many details! (In fact this is why the blue channel can be used as the base for the Dragan technique)
The trick is to combine the blue channel only where it is really needed, seeing as not all of the other (kinder) channels has been blown out.

Actually the bigger problem here is the lack of colour. I just pretty well gave up on the original colours and painted some new ones.

Another step that folks often forget is that after you have "salvaged" the image you can get a much better result if, starting from there, you now do a "portrait" retouch - this often helps by distracting the attention away from the parts that you have fixed.

Here's my shot.
(about 40 minutes of work)

Rô

Thank you for your help, everyone. Now, let's see if I'm doing it right. I'm walking on thin ice here!

If I succeed, I hope you will jump all over my retouch efforts. I'm very new and very eager to improve and learn.

Sally

Very well done Sally, lovely, personally I'd adjust the levels just a little.

Hi there

I gave it a go using the blue channel to start. Then adding some color back in

Butch

Here's a quick try - dupes with multiply mode and lowered opacity. Then painted back on a neutral grey layer only on skin(not sure this did much); then added a layer and painted only skin again with soft light with a flesh tone. Had to do this last step, since as Byro said, not much color left in skin. Levels adjustment.
MargaretM

Thank you Cas. I'm very encouraged that you approve!

Yes, compressed so much she came out pasty-faced, didn't she.

Sally

Maybe this is better?

Sally

Had a spare 15 mins so thought I'd give this a go. equalized a dup layer, did a few blends over 3 layes. Cloned (argg yes) some real bright spots out. burn and dodged to make more natural and a quick colour balance to end it.

I am overwhelmed with the responses to help me out. Being a photographer I have been using forums since last few years and I have no hesistation in saying that this forum is way ahead of most. I can feel the welcome and the warmth from each poster.

Thank you so much.

Getting to the business. I find Edgework, byRo and johndiablo technique appealing for mainly 2 reasons. Each have been able to maintain the hair color and texture of the original image and their results are more closer to the skin and tones of the model.

I am at a loss as how to go about doing/replicating their technique as I don’t even know some of the phrases used by them.

Hoping someone will show me the direction I should take.

Thanks once again to all.

well, typical for me, i posted this last night and as i looked at it today, i went, 'what in the world was i thinking?' :) so, here's an updated version. the last had way too much red in it.

i ran the same image but used a hue/sat layer and a color balance layer to adjust the reds down.

(and i'll probably look at it tomorrow and go, 'boy, i must have been out of my mind' ) :)

Here is what I would do.
Convert to CMYK, duplicate background layer and make a 4c alpha channel to get maximum detail of what the photo has. You do this by command clicking the CMYK channel in the channels pallete which turns all information present into a selection, then click the mask icon at the bottom of the channel pallete. It gives you a grey scale map of your information present. Duplicate that channel and keep it as a "master detail" From there you can isolate natural contours of the face by pushing and pulling curves on the channel and painting in the rest. Once you have your shadow isolated, command click that alpha to convert it into a selection. Now on a new layer set to multiply paint in shadow detail with an appropriate color. Repeat steps for highlights and mids. Then begin color work utilizing adjustment layers with layer masks built from the master detail layer to isolate areas of concentration. After color correction is complete, select all layer except background layer and hit command + option + E. This stamps the layers together above selected layers. Clean up blemishes and save.

Here is a 10 minute quickie.