How to correct this photo ?

[wolverine]

I took this photo at about 7 o'clock in the morning. The sky is actually bright enough. But I'm afraid the result will a bit dark, so I use flashlight to take the picture. Well, I was wrong. I shouldn't use flashlight. The results, the upper portion of the photo looks like foggy. While the sky is also too bright. I looked to each channel, it seems the blue channel is damaged. But I don't know how to fix damaged channel.

I don't know what's your opinion. But I see there's two things to fix in this photo. The fog and the sky. What do you think ? Is there anything else ? Pls help me to correct the photo, and give me step by step explanation for my further study of PS.

Thanks in advance

[philbach]

Well this is not finished, but the photo varies in contrast and color throughout. I would recommend starting with a series of adjustment layers that have masks so you can limit the effect to the proper portions of your image. In the inclosed screen dump using photoshop, I used four stacked levels adjustment layers and added gradient masks.

Its better but still not corrected properly. The top and right still lack contrast and have a bluish tint. But perhaps this will get you started.

[wolverine]

philbach, thanks for your reply. Well, at least the fog on lower portion is gone, and the color have been corrected. Thanks.

If anybody have other methods, I'd be glad to see.

[Daviskw]

Hi there

I used a few curves adjustment layers to even the lighting as much as possible. The tops of the trees on the left were in bad shape and I could not get them to look good so I applied a clouds layer to continue the look of fog to blend them in.

I had already applied cyan to the sky with a selective color adjustment layer.

Butch

[LonK]

It takes some massaging Wolverine, but it's certainly possible to improve this snapshot. I like dramatic skies, so I replaced the existing burned out sky. I didn't find the haze too difficult to adjust. I applied some level, curve and contrast adjustments to a fadeout layer. Some final tweaking and this is what I came up with.

[Syd]

I would crop this photo so that there is more emphasis on our main subjects. The advantage of this is that it also gets rid of a lot of the blown out sky. I liked Butch's idea of adding some misty clouds. Not only does it take care of the trees on the horizon but it also helps to vignette our couple.

Syd

[capriccio]

Hi. It's been a while since I've posted but I hope it's okay if I jump in and give this one a try. I use Photoshop CS2.

I duplicated the original (always - just in case!) and did shadow/highlight with advanced settings, bumping up the highlights about 2/3rds the way over, bumped down the color correction about 1/2 way and set the white point to 22. Then I duped that and ran shadow/highlights again, at similar settings and set that layer's opacity to 20% and masked out the faces (which were too dark without mask). Then I made a new layer with a light yellow painted over the faces, set it to Overlay and reduced it to about 20% opacity. Then I imported a sky and topped it off with a final levels adjustment layer to increase the contrast a bit.

[wolverine]

Butch, Lonnie, Syd, capriccio, big thanks for all your hard effort. I'm really amazed of how creative you are Especially Butch and Lonnie's cool trick Why I couldn't be creative like that This make me think, that in order to retouch some bad photo, doesn't mean that I should be obstinate to keep the originality of the images without any manipulation, because there always be some damage that could not be repaired while keeping the image unchanged

[chrishoggy]

Just used the burn tool on the blue channel and levels adjustment to give this result
Not 100%, but it's getting there

[wolverine]

Cool ! simple but good result. can you explain more detail how to use burn tool on blue channel ? do you mean copy blue channel first ?

[chrishoggy]

I like to keep things simple, as complex methods only lead to confusion

OK, here is a rough run through.
1. opened image in photoshop and ran auto adjustment
2. clicked on Channel view in pallet and selected blue channel to work on (but viewing all channels).
3/ used burn tool (27% exposure) on the blue foggy areas and this seemed to bring back some of the natural colours.
4/ Used burn tool (working on all channels) to darken remaining foggy areas.

Thats it. Quick n simple, just like me

[wolverine]

Thanks for your explanation, chrishoggy

[bart_hickman]

Did a few steps on this one.

Used the set black point on a levels adjust--choose some foreground foliage as the target and the bluish background foliage as the source. This is masked with a gradient as shown in the layer palette attachment.

Then duplicate, highpass filter radius 50, blend mode overlay (similar to sharpen, but gives a less harsh result)

Color balance adjust the yellows to -40 in the shadows

You're close at this point, but the distant background foliage is still too light. So create a silhouette as shown with selective color, make a copy and gaussian blur radius 30 (actually I think it might have been radius 50), then mask it with the inverse of the silhouette and set blend mode to multiply. (layer Blur 30/multiply).

Finally, create a color blend layer and paint using green colors sampled from foliage.

I attached the layers and final result.

Bart

[Flora]

Hi,

great job everybody!!!

Since the shot was taken at 7 o'clock in the morning, I went for a balanced look without strong contrasts or golden sunlight ...

I used Shadow/Highlight twice for this ... first on the whole image, then on the top half only ...

I used the Levels on the people to enhance them a bit, and Selective Colors to adjust the colours.

I painted a soft sky following Swampy's excellent Tutorial, and finished by sharpening lightly with USM.

[wolverine]

Wow, thanks Bart, Flora. I'm amazed of such many ways to correct the photo.

One question, suppose I'd like to replace the sky with dramatic sky like Lonk did ( Lonk are you there ? ), what kind of method to seamlessly place the sky so some part of the sky are naturally placed behind the top of the trees. I don't think using layer mask will help, since I will have to brush over the trees through every detail of the leaves. Does creating the silhouette like Bart did will help ? or using channel masking ? I'm still on my way in learning channel mask, and it's kinda confusing for me at this moment If you have any suggestion of method instead of channel mask, pls let me know.

Thanks in advance

[Daviskw]

Hi again

Below is a total sky replacement... You will need to do some touchup because the trees are very transparent. I darkened the a green channel with levels then continued to paint with black and white to fill the majority of mask as needed. Then on the edges I used opacity, burn and dodge to refine.

After I used to mask to insert a new sky I opened a blank layer set to darken. Then I sampled green in the trees and darkened the edges of the trees and sky as needed.

Butch

[bart_hickman]

Originally Posted by wolverine

Wow, thanks Bart, Flora. I'm amazed of such many ways to correct the photo.

One question, suppose I'd like to replace the sky with dramatic sky like Lonk did ( Lonk are you there ? ), what kind of method to seamlessly place the sky so some part of the sky are naturally placed behind the top of the trees. I don't think using layer mask will help, since I will have to brush over the trees through every detail of the leaves. Does creating the silhouette like Bart did will help ? or using channel masking ? I'm still on my way in learning channel mask, and it's kinda confusing for me at this moment If you have any suggestion of method instead of channel mask, pls let me know.

Thanks in advance

Yes, the silhouette I created could be a start towards creating what is known as an image-based mask and it's a good way to go when the object you are trying to mask is complex and has fringe areas with varying degrees of opacity where the object and background blend.

However, your picture is a very easy case because the sky and trees are so well contrasted and sharp. For this situation, I would go for the background eraser or the extract filter instead.

Bart

[LonK]

Originally Posted by wolverine

One question, suppose I'd like to replace the sky with dramatic sky like Lonk did ( Lonk are you there ? ), what kind of method...

Wolverine, I use the color range selection tool in PhotoImpact to make a mask which I enhance, then fill with a positioned replacement sky. I make that a separate layer that I can further manipulate if needed. I guess the process is pretty similar to the image-based masking that Bart described.

I usually don't go into much detail about my techniques 'cuz so few folks use PhotoImpact for this type of thing.

[wolverine]

Lonk, thanks a lot for your kindness to explain your method.

Since I use PS I think I should try Bart's method combined with Butch's method as it easier for me to start.

Most of it, I'd like to thank you all who have guided me in this thread, I found it's really helpful for my further study of retouching arts.

Thanks everybody