Dan Marino needs your help

[JohnnyL]

This image was taken in some low light, the auto focus grab the background instead of the forground. I know some sharpening is needed but where to begin?

[mistermonday]

Duplicate the background layer and set the blend mode to Screen. Then duplicate that new layer, the blend mode should be set to Screen by default. This will brighten up the faces within range. Next to a "merge all" layer, apply the Shadow/Highlight adjustment setting the tone width to about 25 and the amount just enough to brighten the wine rack and the man on the viewers left but not too much as to over brighten the other two people.
Next reduce the saturation of the skin preferably by lowering the Vibrance if you have PS CS4 or later or just adding a Hue/Sat adj layer and lowering the sat.
Finally the image is out of focus. You can sharpen it using Smart Sharpen which will help but it won't be perfect.
BTW, it would have been much better if you had reduced your image size from 30 x 20 to about 12 x 8 and saved it at a higher jpg quality setting.
Regards, Murray

[Flora]

Another way:

• Adjusted brightness in Camera Raw

• Unsharp Mask on the people

• Neat Image on the pixelated shadows

• Lens Blur on the background

Nice job Murray!

[mistermonday]

Flora, nicer job! I just focused on exposure since the attachment was extremely compressed & pixelated. Yours looks great, so imagine what could be done on a high res image.
Best regards, Murray

[David Stevenson]

JohnnyL- Follow MisterMonday's instructions, but as a last step, use then sharpen tool on the faces. Adobe says that tis tool has the latest band best algorithyism now available, n Let me know how it turns out for you. I did it using your image and it turned out great!
David

[JohnnyL]

Thanks guys, will post my edit when finished.

[Stormy]

I had to try this one too. It was very pixilated, but I got an ok end product.

[JohnnyL]

for future reference whats the best way of posting a large image

[mistermonday]

If you become a Patron member, you can post images up to 200KB max, and that is usually good enough a size to represent the image. However, if you wish to make a higher resolution available for people to analyze or work on, you need to load it on an external web site and post a link to the image in your post. There are many sites that will allow you to store and download images for free and others at very low cost.
Regards, Murray