Blown out white dress

[Laurzo]

I am new to this forum and relatively new to the photo biz. I usually just muddle through my edits until I figure it out but this one has me stumped! It's actually a photo from the fifties I believe. The colors are really bold but the white dress is tripping me up. All of my edits are making it look dirty instead of bringing out any texture. Any ideas?? Thanks so much :-)

[mistermonday]

Laurzo, welcome to RetouchPro. The Shadow/Highlight adjustment in PS will take care of your problem in 30 secs. Take the Highlight Slider Amount to 0 and adjust the Shadow Slider Amount with the Tonal Width set to approx 50%.
Regards, Murray

[TommyO]

Laurzo,

I would agree with Murray, in that S/H is a quick fix. (although, he may have flipped the wording around.... if you want to bring out the highlights, adjust the HL slider) Another quick way is to open in ACR and adjust the recovery slider.

I don't see much detail in the dress, unless your higher res scan may contain some. There does appear to be some folds in the cloth. I often accentuate those folds by using a little burn on a new layer. The nice thing about the burn tool in later versions, is it allows you to burn shadows, mid-tones and highlights separately.

I did a very quick example, nothing great, for you to see what I mean. If you spend a little time with it and use a very low opacity brush, it can be very realistic looking.

[lynn55]

Hello

I used curve and reduce noise.

I did resize photo size from 410 x 346 to 1024 x 864




I edited::
I am sorry for taking mistake for I copied and edited photo from TommyO.

[TommyO]

And Lynn should have stated she used my copy, not the original. It is a nice addition certainly, but curves alone would not have brought out the detail.... it just wasn't there to begin with. The detail was added manually.

[0lBaldy]

Originally Posted by Laurzo

I am new to this forum and relatively new to the photo biz. I usually just muddle through my edits until I figure it out but this one has me stumped! It's actually a photo from the fifties I believe. The colors are really bold but the white dress is tripping me up. All of my edits are making it look dirty instead of bringing out any texture. Any ideas?? Thanks so much :-)

Welcome to RetouchPRO Hope you enjoy your stay here and make lots of friends.

Yeppers, I agree with the dirty look ... Mine looks dirty tooo!

[lynn55]

Hello Tommy, I edited my thread. My post # 4


I resized and cropped woman then I adjust shadows/highlights and color level.

[0lBaldy]

Originally Posted by lynn55

Hello Tommy, I edited my thread. My post # 4


I resized and cropped woman then I adjust shadows/highlights and color level.

*(Slaps self on head! Duuh! Should of thought of that!)..... Nice Crop!!!

[lynn55]

Hi 0lBaldy !

Thank you for your comment.

I am happy about my great idea.

[Cupcake]

Here is another idea.

Added some white to the dress added some color to the arms and the chest.

Cropped it another way also.

[Laurzo]

Wow, you guys are amazing! Thanks so much for all of your suggestions! I will try them all and might even try to rescan if my friend still has the original photo.