Removing shadows

[PJM]

Hi
I have been learning CS2 from books since August last year. Before this I had never done anything to any photo before. I am trying to put together a weddingportrait for my daughter whose photos have been lost from picures family took at the wedding. I have just about done as good as I can do, the only problem is that across her dress there is a dark shadow that spoils everything. I have tried all I can find to remove this shadow and am wondering if anyone out there knows of a way to remove shadows from a photo. I would appreciate any help I could get
Cheers
PJM

[mistermonday]

PJM, welcome to RP. Shadows can be easy or difficult to remove depending on the colors and lighting adjacent to them. It would be more helpful if you posted a copy of your photo. You can attached a version which is a max of 100KB to your posting here or you can post a msg with a link to your image on some external site. Regards, Murray

[PJM]

Hi Mistermonday
I have attached a copy of my photo as suggested. I have done the best I can with my limited knowledge. The bride(my daughter) came off one photo the groom from another and although I have tried I cannot remove the shadows from the brides face and dress and its looks wrong having them there. I dont have any better photos of her to choose from - as I said her photos are gone and we cant get replacements.

[mistermonday]

PJ, the image you uploaded is very tiny (~1.5" sq) and low resolution. It is hard to see any detail let alone tweak. I would recommend that you post a higher resolution version somewhere and place the link to it back in this thread. If you need a host, you can upload it for free at http://www.pixentral.com Regards, Murray

[Gary Richardson]

As Murray says, the image is too small to do much with, but I've done a really quick job so you can see roughly what is possible.

[Cassidy]

Yes the image is way too small, however I tried to incrementally enlarge it a little and using a black mask painted in the areas I wanted screened.

[Flora]

Hi everybody,

PJM,

Welcome to RP!

Agreed with everybody else about size and resolution of your posted picture ... You could follow the second link under my signature for detailed help on the topic ... .... and, along with any restorations you might have done, it would be a great help for us to attach the original scanning too ...

That said, as you have seen already, a lot can be done to restore your picture ... I worked on your daughter's face and shadows of the dress only ... (PS CS2)

[lkroll]

Not going to tell you how unless you post a bigger piece for use to enhance. I will say that I did this in GIMP, but all the steps can be done in PS (assuming you have Flaming Pear's Tachyon filter).

Sorry that I missed masking the fellows hand and the flowers; flowers turned a little pink; hey, I like the pink flowers anyway.

[PJM]

Thankyou so much all the people who replied to me. I have tried again to upload a better quality picture hopes it works. It amazes me what you have done already when my picture was not up to any quality. In New Zealand where I live I have been unable to get much help about htis problem - you guys are great

[mistermonday]

Hi PJM, this image is definitely better. The shadows are very underexposed so I found that the normal use of the PS Highlight/Shadow tool adjustment diid not work very well. I selected the Luminosity (Ctrl+Alt+~) and selected the reverse and copied it to its own layer. I then changed the blend mode to Screen. This cause a hard edge along the left side of the veil and the gentlemans head. A small touch up with the Blur brush fixed that. There seem to be a magenta cast across parts of the image so a curve move took care of that. The Gentleman's hand has a magenta cast and was quite different from his face so a loose selection around it and a Hue / Sauration quickly fixed it. Hope this points you in the right direction.
Regards, Murray

[Cassidy]

As per the smaller image, but this time I tackled the dress shadows predominately using sampled colour from surrounding area and painting out shadows with luminosity. The Neckline was cloned and a copy of the right side of the dress flipped horizontally to complete the neckline with better clarity.

[Gary Richardson]

Very quick job this, could be refined a little to bring out some detail, but sorry I don't have time available at the moment.

Duplicated image, desaturated it, inverted, then set layer blend mode to soft light. Reduced layer opacity, then masked everything but the bride.

Finally applied Neat Image to reduce noise.

[Flora]

Great job everybody!

PJM,

thank you for posting a larger size picture!!! That surely made a difference!!

I just worked on the bride's face and, partially on her decollete ....

One question .... was the groom or the groom's shoulders and head added to the photo? I'm asking because in my opinion, he looks much sharper than the bride .... the difference in colours and lighting makes me think that they were photographed separately and in different spots (no strong shadows but a nicely diffused light on his face and, while on his hand the light source seems to be coming from the same side as for the bride - my upper left side of the picture - on his face it appears to be coming from my right side of the picture... ) .... The bride's head veil on the groom side shows a hard edge and it ends a bit unnaturally on his shoulder ... (Attachment 2)

[Gary Richardson]

Good catch on the neckline Flora, missed that entirely.

Agree with you about the groom, definitely looks like a cut'n'shunt job.

[PJM]

Hi all
yes the groom was made up from a couple of photos. As I explained my daughters wedding photos were lost and I am making up a photo so she can have a least one near decent memory. Its very sad when precious memories like her are lost and cannot be replaced - that is why I appreciate what you have done to help me. There are one or 2 other photos I have obtained from others who were at the wedding and they have shadow problems too so getting tips on how to deal with shadows is really appreciated and hopefully I will be able to do someting with these other photos because of it. Thankyou so much - a novice who is trying to learn from books really thanks you

[Gary Richardson]

Sorry to hear about your daughters wedding picture loss. Good luck with your project.

Anything else we can do to help, just ask. Can't guarantee we'll be able to resolve all problems, but there's usually someone here who'll have a handle on how to fix things.

Best wishes,

Gary

[Flora]

Hi,

Thanks Gary ... The neckline is something we women probably pay more attention to ... Cass and myself were the only ones to worry about it ...

Pam,

I obviously didn't read your first post as I should have ... that's why I made the silly question about adding the groom to the photo ... sorry ...

Sorry your daughter's wedding pictures got lost ... she must be very sad about it...

I finished working on your picture ...

To remove the shadows I did the following:

* Duplicated the Background Layer.

* Created a Curves Adjustment Layer and tweaked it as in Attachment 2.

* Making sure I was working on the Curves Layer's Mask I inverted it (Ctrl+I) so it became black and carefully painted on it with a soft white Brush, changing its Opacity according to the needs ... I painted on the darker part of your daughter's lovely face and on the darker shadows on her dress. Attachment 3 Merged Down.

* Duplicated the Merged Layer, set its Blending to Screen and, keeping the Alt key pressed, I clicked on the 'Add Layer Mask' button at the bottom of my Layers' Palette... The mask created was Black= Hide All so, again, using a soft white brush, I carefully painted over the still darker shadows on the dress.

* I lowered the Screen Layer's Opacity to 75-80% .... The dress' shadows had faded considerably ... I didn't want to remove them completely because it would have looked unnatural ... I just used the Healing Brush along the shadows' edges to blend them better in.

* The corrected shadows on the dress had lost part of their saturation so I created a blank Layer set to Color on top, sampled color from the dress and painted over the 'corrected' shadows parts.

Hope this helps ...

[PJM]

Hi again
I cannot give a big enough thankyou for the help with my daughter's wedding photo. Thanks to this help, she now has a precious photo of her wedding day again - with the promise of a couple more because of what you have taught me ( special thanks to Flora). I started learning Photoshop CS2 because of this disaster of photo loss and didnt imagine the result would be so wonderful. I intend to continue learning from the books I have accumulated plus from the tips I know I can now get from the wonderful people in RetouchPro. It has opened up a new world for me. Once again many thanks to you all
Cheers
Pam

[Cameraken]

Hi Pam
Welcome to RetouchPro

I have just realised that I forgot to post my effort. So here is mine.
I found some more detail in the dress. Hope you like it.

Ken

[PJM]

Hi Cameraken
It certainly does has more detail in the dress - how did you manage that. Thankyou - it amazes me how you all do these things so quickly. I have been made to feel really welcome here by so many people - to think I hesitated about joining because I am such a novice

[Cameraken]

Hi Pam
Thanks for your kind comments.

Adding more detail to the dress is easy.

Image > Adjustments > Equalize

That’s It. Easy eh.

The décolleté.
I used the copy flip paste method.

Select the neck and dress from the right side
Copy and paste to a new layer
Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal
Now move into position on the left side.
Then adjust levels/curves/opacity to make it blend in.

The other main thing to do is make the man’s hand match his face

Create a new blank layer and set blending mode to color.
Pick a colour from the face and paint onto the blank layer to match the hand to the face.
You can also use this layer to paint more colour into the Flowers.

Hope this Helps.


Ken

[hashpipe]

Hello, looking into starting my own restoring business so i thought i would give this one a try.

[PJM]

Hi again
my next challenge I have set myself is faded colour so if I get stuck I will ask for help again. The different methods people used for my daughters photo let me know that there is a lot of help out there
cheers
Pam

[makeovermagic]

Pam, I'm sorry to hear about your daughter's wedding pictures. I thought I would give your picture a try. I've never done this type of work before.

MOM

[studioj]

Well Pam, I'm new here, or new too, like you, but not new on Wedding pictures.

It's sad that the first pics are lost, but you can be very exited on create a great new picture of their wedding, that could make you fell like a Fireman who rescues somebody, really

Also, I'll tell you about my self, I work as a ad designer for a newspaper, so, we allways have lot of work to do, and don't have time to learn about photoshop on practice. But what I did with my wedding picture it's do changes every day, if I have 5 free minutes, then I took a hand and enhance, then the other next day.

The thing it's, our living room's wedding portrait was a gift to my wife on our first anniversary... YES!!! I took a year to make it great, but it is now.

So don't worry about something it's not going great, just take a breath and doit again.

There are a lot of filters, a lot of brushes, a lot of adjustement layers, and they all can be fun to try on this picture. Don't be scare to do anything, as you can see, here are a lot of people who nicely help in whatever you want.

[PJM]

Yes I am finding out that good things take time and I must say that my picture has worked out really well thanks to all the help I have received. I think that as a 59 year old grandmother of 12 with no photographic background whatsoever and not much computer experience either that if I can do this (albeit with help) then anyone can if they just take the time and dont give up when it gets hard. I have learnt there are a lot of people here who are only to willing to help.
Cheers
Pam