Hello everyone,

Complete Noob here.

Attached at two photographs I took at the White Party in Miami this past weekend. I took quite a few like this, but chose these two because they seem to have the same problems as some (most) of the others. Contrast, blown out highlights, etc...

Basically what I am doing is getting feedback and other people's viewpoints (ideas) on how to improve my work. Please feel free to crop, alter, etc... any part of these photos to show me what you would do to improve them.

If you could list your workflow that would be terrific as well. I am so glad I found these forums and will definately be reading up on the HDR section. (especially the How-To-Do-From-One-Shot threads).

Many thanks in advance for everyone who takes time to try and all my new future e-friends.

On the subject with what appears to be a Santa hat, the highlights are, as you say, blown out. No information. I would imagine that what you do with the picture would, in part, be determined by where and how you want to display the picture. On the second picture, there is information in the shadows that can be recovered, but again, final use would determine what would be done. This is just a personal opinion as I am not a professional retoucher or graphic artist.

dc

Added a pic. Also, in the fire pic I removed the ties that were holding the wings on.

Many thanks for your observations and comments.

The direction that I was going in (in my work, which doesn't reflect "correct" work as it is only my interpretation) is that I have been darkening the image to increase the shadows and slightly increasing the blue light on the subject. I cropped it at the waist as I simply could not do anything for the blown out highlights. I have been "trying" to paint in the shadows of his wings on the wall behind him.. but no luck yet. That is completely beyond my skill level.

You have two images. I think it would be helpful for you to identify which image you are talking about along with the specific changes you want. I can see that both images have wings.

dc

The blue image, Duplicated then I used "Select Color Range" to select Whites. Then did a Selective color adjustment on Whites (set to absolute) and added Cyan and Magenta (8-1). This restored some color information to the blownout areas, and keeps the neon glow.

The sepia colored Angle, I duplicated the background, then on the dupe, used the History Brush set to multiply to paint back in detail. I used a large brush, but you could refine this and just paint where you need to bring up shadows.

Multiplied the original about 10 times till there was no changes made.. Made new document from this

Screened original about 5 times.. made new document from this

Made HDR from Original, Screened, and Multiplied documents then tone-mapped

Copied the red, blue, green channels from original and made a new document from each.. created a HDR from these three to make a luminosity tone-map..

Loaded the two tone-maps into photoshop..
Moved the Original, Screened, multiplied version onto the Luminosity version set the top newly moved layer to Soft Light..

levels

sharpened

Levels
Converted to B/W
blacked out background
Vignette, crop
sharpen, curves

Only have time to post at the moment, and I forgot half of what I did anyway :surprise:

Levels
Converted to B/W
blacked out background
Vignette, crop
sharpen, curves


OMG that is awesome. The background was a bit distracting as well, but yours is great.

Multiplied the original about 10 times till there was no changes made.. Made new document from this

Screened original about 5 times.. made new document from this

Made HDR from Original, Screened, and Multiplied documents then tone-mapped

Copied the red, blue, green channels from original and made a new document from each.. created a HDR from these three to make a luminosity tone-map..

Loaded the two tone-maps into photoshop..
Moved the Original, Screened, multiplied version onto the Luminosity version set the top newly moved layer to Soft Light..

levels

sharpened

This is great too, which gives me an idea for how mine "almost" came out.

I still have the blue tint, but I had cropped mine at his waist to get rid of the blown out highlights and light source.
I will play with my original image again based on your workflow and post my outcome for critique.

You guys on here are GOOD!

Thank you for your kind comments.

Looking forward to seeing your revised outcome