Restoring colour to backlit area

[lej]

Hi

I have been playing with this image of kids sitting in a fire engine for awhile but have only got so far with it. (I am using PS7 so don't know if the more recent versions' Shadows/highlights feature that I have seen referred to would have worked on this.) I have used curves and blend modes to lighten the figures and raised the saturation but there is not much colour in the two back boys. I tried painting some colour on another layer but the result looked unnatural and totally out of kilter with the front girl. Is there anything else I can do to improve this? Thanks.

[0lBaldy]

On this small sample I did the following using PS7

Ctrl+J..Duplicate Background
Changed to Screen Mode
Ctrl+J 8 more times
unchecked background eyeball
Merged visible to get all the screen layers into one layer
Turned the background layer back on
masked the combined screen layer so all children were about the same
Created a new blank layer
Shft+Ctrl+Alt+E to combine what is visible into the new layer
Loosely select the boys heads....
Ctrl+J to put the heads on their own layer
Hold the Alt button and click the half black/white circle @ the bottom of the layer pallet... slide cursor to Hue/Saturation and release button
In the box that pops up check the box "Group with previous layer"... click OK
adjust 'Master' Hue to about -35 (to the left)
change to 'Yellows'.. adjust Hue to about -14 and the 'Saturation' to around +47... Click OK
Paint with black on the mask to fix areas other than boys faces
(On a higher resolution/larger pic these numbers will probably change)

I also used Imagenomic Noiseware to remove some of the noise

[Cupcake]

How about a nice B&W!

[lej]

Thanks for that. I love the black and white and removing the noise makes for a great improvement. I have some other badly lit Playcentre photos that would benefit from similar treatment.

OlBaldy - I started with the original and followed your steps but don't quite follow "masked the combined screen layer so all children were about the same". Assume you mean add a Layer mask but could you expand on that please?

Thanks

[0lBaldy]

Originally Posted by lej

OlBaldy - I started with the original and followed your steps but don't quite follow "masked the combined screen layer so all children were about the same". Assume you mean add a Layer mask but could you expand on that please?

Thanks

Yep.. add a layer mask, then paint mask with black, white, grays, till things look pretty even

[philbach]

I copied the Background layer x2 using screen blending mode
I applied a layer mask on the second layer to mask out lighter areas
I used a hsl adjustment layer to increase the saturation on the two kids
I used a median filter to decrease grain

[chillin]

Playing with selective curves adjustments & HSL.