concert image light problem.

[Shannon]

I live in Monroe Michigan and just went to the Vince Gill concert at our fair yesterday. I took a couple of great photos, but the one I like is probably the one that bothers me the most. I got a him in a great pose, but the lights on the stage are very overpowering. I need to know how to dial them down a bit and bring him out a little more. It's too dark in front and there are areas of *alot* of contrast.I know part of it has to do with the whote balance I was using on my camera, but with him moving all the time I did'nt have a chance to make any specific settings. Plus the light soureces (sunlight and stagelight) were changing constantly. By the time I made changes for one shot, he had moved halfway across the stage and goofed me up totally!!!!! I wanna save this one if I can. Everyone will want a printout. Does anyone have any suggestions?

[roger_ele]

Hi Shannon, welcome to PetouchPro

My take on this is that you don't need the lights in the background to go darker, you need to bring this up brighter and with more contrast until he pops out and the background is dazzle and ambiance. He does have a quiet mood in the photo, but with energy - I hope I didn't change the personality of it too much for you. I tilted it a little and did a levels and curves adjustment to lighten, also lightened his face a little. I hope you like it, but if not it will give you a different idea on how to solve the problem. Sounds like you had fun.

Regards, Roger

[K. Johnstone]

Lens flares, my favorite. It's the light near his head making a flare and causing his face to lose contrast. It's not as bad as it could have been, because the worst of it is effecting just his hat. Ordinarily, all those tines coming off the lights should go... but it's a concert photo. I see photos like that where it sort of adds to the image. If you wanted it all gone, just make a selection of the lights on the right, flip 'em and paste 'em. Then it'd be cloning work on his shirt and building back his hat. But I figured you might like all that stuff, except the green blobs. Who needs those?

So all I did was add a little bit of contrast to his face with curves.

[Shannon]

Yeah I actually wanted some of the "tinge" lighting effects. I just didn't want them to create so much contrast against his face. So all you did was select his face (and maybe his hat) and use curves change the contrast a bit? Your version is light years better than mine. I'll try what you did and post my results later.

[sdubose99]

Also don't forget the power of selective focus. On this one I did several layers of contrast/levels with layer masks to increase Vince's contrast, then gaussian blur only on the background to leave him sharply focused. I use PS7

thanks,
Scott