Backlit Photo, Need to Make it Look Non-Backlit!

[tomascubero]

Hi Guys,

Well first a short hello to everyone involved here, I am an amateur photographer in Costa Rica mainly based on aviation photography.

Such it seems that these photos usually have to be very good in order to be accepted at major sites such as Airliners.net and Jetphotos.net.

Back this April, I had the chance to fly over the airport and take lots of shots, among them there is a large Business Jet (A 727-100) and most of the photos I took the plane is far away, though I did get a close shot to it, the only problem is that its backlit.

Now, if I try the usual contrast, highlights, curves and other light tools, I won't get a decent result, so I thought, hey maybe some Photoshop expert can do much better than me!

So I've attached a link to the original un-touched photo and I would be very thankful if someone could help me editing it so that it doesn't look backlit, and of course without much grain on it.

http://www.badongo.com/es/pic/1366989

Click in the bottom "See the Photo in the Original Size". If its in spanish its "Ver la foto en tamaño original".

Just incase, I use a Canon 400D and this photo was taken with a terrible Tamron 200-400mm (where is that Canon 400mm L Lens...)!

Best Regards!

Tomas Cubero M.
San Jose, Costa Rica

[chillin]

When I click "See the Photo in the Original Size" I get this
error

[DCobb]

I am posting two photographs. The first is a cropped image that I did two things to.

1. First an automatic levels adjustment
2. Duplicated the layer and changed the layer blend to Luminosity and did a Brightness/Contrast adjustment.

The second image is the original as I downloaded it.

I may not understand the term backlit. To me it would be like photographing a person at a place like the beach with the sun directly behind them. It appears to me that the sun is directly overhead. However, I could be wrong--it wouldn't be the first time.

dc

Looking again at the second image, the shadow direction of the subject standing at the rear of the plane does seem to indicate the sun is slightly behind the plane.

Also, by clicking the red text below the picture that directs you to get original size, I was able to get a downloaded picture on my computer; however, did not save it. At least it is now working.

[grannysdc]

Did basicly the same as DCobb.. a couple levels adjustments..

http://www.badongo.com/pic/1368964

[Juergen D]

I would not call the photo backlit, just a little on the light side . I ran it through ACR 4.1 (almost does miracles). Next some more Levels and Hue/Sat adjustments. Some light USM. Cropped and straightened.

Juergen

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?pi...QONVXQhSlxcbhE

[Dave.Cox]

I would say that this is a bit washed out, and also the sun is from the back of the plane. To bring it out, I did an overall adjustment of levels using the method the Katrin Eismann describes in her book, and then did a separate adjustment on the plane only, using the same method. You could also do the same on some of the other subjects, but I prefer to leave it so the focus is on the plane.

[tomascubero]

Hi Guys,

Thank you ALL for your tries, after seeing what you could do, I agree I am a complete Photoshop noob! All of you guys have done a tremendous job and I really appreciate your help, if some of you could post an un-resized but light-edited photos in the original resolution, I would really appreciate that.

Thanks very much guys, you did my day!
Tomas.

[Juergen D]

Here you go: http://www.badongo.com/pic/1387770
It is in full size and res., except for the cropping. There seems to be some blue cast, which may need some more work.

Juergen

[tomascubero]

Originally Posted by Juergen D

Here you go: http://www.badongo.com/pic/1387770
It is in full size and res., except for the cropping. There seems to be some blue cast, which may need some more work.

Juergen

Hi Juergen,

That Badongo is quite bad, it wont display the original photo again, please use http://www.speedyshare.com/ its much better and straight forward, or email them to tomascubero @ gmail.com (remove the spaces).

Tomas.

[tomascubero]

Hi Guys,

I've got the originals from Dave.Cox, Juergen and Granny, thanks very much for the help guys, I'm going to edit them and then upload it to Jetphotos.net, I'll let you know how it goes!

Thanks so much!
Tomas.