I would like to know how can I correct the overexposed female and color correct her face. I had tried to use multiply blending mode on a layer but it didn't come out too good, her skin had some dark blotches on her cheeks and chin, also, the color was not even.

Gerald McClaren

I’ve done selective adjustments to the lady’s side of the picture,
some patchwork on chicks & forehead and all exposure fix + color correction, but not so much to the man’s face

Gerald,

Did you apply some smoothing or other corrections already? It looks like it.
If so, could you post an uncorrected version?

k

Ken, here is the original uncorrected version.

Gerald McClaren

Gerald,

I tried the healing brush with a grain pattern (per a tutorial I found & posted under "Dodge/Burn to smooth skin?", AND then ran ByRo's "Color de-clipping" action and painted in areas that were still over-exposed. Then did levels and a curve adjustment to add contrast again.

ByRo's tutorial on Color de-clipping is very useful for overexposed highlights, and I could have adjusted his default settings and probably completed the work just with that procedure, but I've been playing with the grain pattern healing brush technique and decided to give that a go. (Oh, I also added an inverted desaturated layer set on overlay blend -- blurred and opacity reduced to taste, because there was still a bit too much contrast.)

Gerald,

I used byRo's de-Clip action to identify the clipped areas of the ladies face and painted them back in. I selected the womans face and used Curves, empty layers set to Color, Softlight to improve the face. The blacks were pretty well clipped so I tried to bring them back into specs with Curves.

k

Thanks CJ and Ken for both of your input on helping to correct the overexposed photo. I'll try ByRo method and see how it will come out.


Gerald McClaren

In LAB, I used the clone tool to work on the A and B channels in one layer, adding, basically painting the colors of her face from one area to the blown areas. This layer was set to color mode. Brush was set to Darken.

Then on another Layer, I did the same sort of clone painting on the overflashed areas in the L channel. This layer was set to Luminosity. (I do this sort of painting individually on the three channels so there is some randomness occuring when they are composited, and the result doesn't look as cloned.)

Then I set lowered the opacity some on each of my layers. I think I used about 55% on the luminance layer, and about 80% on the color layer.

Then back to sRGB for curves. I took the boa to be black, and used a dark point on it to set the black point. The name card on the man's jacket is white, and it was fine, so no need to set a white point. Then the question was: what color was the man's jacket and tie. I decided it also had to be neutral, and not the blue that the original shows. Once the neutral areas were set, I did some slight tweaking on the curves to try to balance the skins.

Finally, I did a small shadow/highlight adjustment to bring some shape to the man's jacket, bring out the background a bit, and to up the highlights (her skin) detail a bit more.

This correction brings the overexposure on the woman more into line with the excess flash on the man. But the flash is causing at least as much havoc on the man's face, and I think it would be a bigger job to fix it there.

Duffy

i added a layer painted a fair tone, over the hard light area and set the mode to darken

Hi! evilworkz.com, where did you get the color tone to paint over the female from? Nice job.

Gerald McClaren

i used #eec5a9 and just played with the fader a bit
i selected a tone from her face, and clicked and hold down the mouse button while you paint so you dont over lape..er

Hi! evilworkz.com, your illustrations were very, very, :pleased: helpful. I appreaciated it very much, thanks a lot.

Gerald McClaren

Hi! evilworkz.com, your illustrations were very, very, :pleased: helpful. I appreaciated it very much, thanks a lot.

Gerald McClaren

Not not a prob :grin: i find the easier the better, i also use this technique while coloring black and white photos, each color on its sepperate layer

glad it was helpfull :nod:

Used threshold to find that black and white point. Adjusted Curves. Used te lasso tool for the woman face and adjusted the level and curves on that area alone.

My main correction on this one was the highlights on the womans face, they are so blown out that there is really nothing there. I tried everything and then what worked (sort of) wasmaking them all a selection. I used the wand because it made a nice jagged selection (20% I think) then I selected a spot just out side the selection and painted with the brush tool set to normal at 20% opacity. It's not perfect but with a little effort...
Then I used channels to take out 30% of the red from the blue and green channels. Finished by just desaturating red in hue and saturation.