Image Help - - Problem with Brightness/Contrast

soleah · #1 07-08-2006, 01:21 PM

I'm stump with this photo (first attachment)!

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.

mistermonday · #2 07-08-2006, 03:27 PM

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

Littlecoo · #3 07-08-2006, 07:56 PM

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.

soleah · #4 07-10-2006, 09:28 AM

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.

johnnieB · #5 07-10-2006, 09:58 AM

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

manta1900 · #6 07-10-2006, 10:10 AM

I tried to keep the original colors...

Littlecoo · #7 07-10-2006, 09:08 PM

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.

Flora · #8 07-11-2006, 03:16 PM

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...

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 ...

Flora · #9 07-11-2006, 03:22 PM

Hi Littlecoo,

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

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

Kraellin · #10 07-12-2006, 08:53 AM

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

soleah · #11 07-12-2006, 09:51 AM

Thanks everyone. Now I have a lot of options.

Flora

. 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.

Kraellin · #12 07-12-2006, 09:59 AM

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

Kraellin · #13 07-12-2006, 10:23 AM

here's another way you can do this without any filters. i posted a similar technique in this thread: http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/photo-retouching/13973-need-help-dark-image.html

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

Littlecoo · #14 07-12-2006, 08:17 PM

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

duwayne · #15 07-12-2006, 09:02 PM

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.