New here and in desperate need of help!!

[Tonette]

Hello everyone! I'm new to this forum and as I mentioned in the title, I'm in desperate need of help.

Kindly take a look at this:

http://web.tri-isys.com/bluewest/Dsc02773.jpg


It's a pretty bad picture... taken against the glare of the sunlight. I'm wondering if the picture can still be saved or at least improved upon. This picture was taken in a rush coz the guy in the middle is a celebrity and was in a hurry so we had no second chances.

I'm really new at this and can barely use Photoshop. All I could do was lighten the picture... not much of an improvement. PLEASE PLEASE help save this picture. I'm really desperate!!

Thanks in advance for any help or tips.

Tonette

[brandonx49]

Hi - I made an attmpt on this one. Can anyone give recommendations on how to avoid this kind of shot and why it turned out this way. I'm learning photography so what I think happened is that the camera adjusted the apeture/shutter speed for the bright light coming through the window so it took a very fast shot resulting in an underexposed forground (ie the subjects)

Brad

[Janet Petty]

Your restoration turned out exactly like mine. There was little if any detail in most of the channels. The detail that matters (the faces) is simply not there...at least that I can find. Anyone else???

As you pointed out, the camera was most likely set to automatic and metered for the light rather than the faces of the subjects. Backlighting is fine and can create some rather dramatic effects if it is done correctly. In this case, oops. I'm sorry.

I'd LOVE to be proven wrong in this case. Someone more experienced have a go at it, please.

Janet

[Flora]

Hi Tonette,

Welcome to RP!

This is the best I could do for this picture ... As to why that happened beside the fact that it was taken 'against the glare of the sunlight' ... or what to do to prevent it happening again when taking pictures, I really can't help ... (I'm no good in taking pictures ... ).

Working with Photoshop, once lifted the shadows, as Janet said already, there were practically no detail to work on on the faces of some of the boys/girls ....

What I did to bring them out a bit is:

• Selected the most faded faces.
• Created a Levels adjustment Layer for the selection and increased the contrast a bit.
• Created several new Empty Layers, blendings: Overlay, Screen, Soft Light, Color, Lighten, Darken to emphasize, correct and improve.

Hope this helps ... a bit ...

[Janet Petty]

You have a lot of patience and perserverence. You simply are the best. Great job.

[Leah]

How to stop it happening again -- depends on your camera and what it can do. The easiest option (and one you can do on almost all cameras) is to change the flash settings to tell the camera to use flash whether it wants to or not -- you should have an option for that. Or if you have a choice of metering modes change to spot metering (rather than the default evaluative metering) and use a mid-tone or skintone area to meter from.