Bad lighting on a very important day

[LeeM]

Here is a very badly exposed picture of my daughter receiving an award on graduation day. I recently found it in an old box and have been unable to restore it to acceptable quality.

I am a part-time hobbyist using photoshop CS2 and Noise Ninja, but this photo is beyond my skills. Any advice?

[Kraellin]

just to look at the attachment without running it through psp, it looks to have 2 major problems, noise and lighting.

try Neat Image for the noise or some of your noise filters in PS. Neat Image has a free version which shld work for you (i have it installed also).

for the lighting, a fast fix might be Fast Fix, also a free plugin. or, try 'curves' or 'levels' or 'contrast/brightness' in PS. any of those can lighten things up a bit.

if you still run into trouble, post your work so far and someone will no doubt take a look.

Craig

[Gary Richardson]

Had a quick play with this one, but no great improvement. Just not much to work with, its badly lit, noisy and out of focus. Will be interested to see what anyone manages to do with it.

[krishna]

That's the best one can do on this. Nice work Gary.

[Gary Richardson]

Thanks Krishna.

[Flora]

Hi LeeM,

Welcome to RP!

I used Neat Image (noise reduction sofware similar to Noise Ninja) on the noise and the Curves to try to balance the lighting ...

Geat job Gary!

[Cameraken]

Hi Lee

Welcome to RP

As you know this is pretty bad. I tried to bring out a bit more detail in the faces as I guess that’s the important bit.

Looks OK in Black and White

Ken

[Gary Richardson]

Thanks Flora for your kind words, wish I could do more with this one, but nothing I've tried so far has come out any better than the one I posted.