Overexposed Baby Head (newbie posting)

[CJ Swartz]

This is one of those areas where I need more practice, and this child is too cute to resist working with, so here's my effort to combine the face from the bath with the original. (I really tried all the channels of the original, thinking that CMYK or LAB would help, but that light damage to the top part of the photo was brutal to every channel.)

[Kraellin]

ziblets, welcome to RP.

this was a LOT of work. there just was not enough definition left to do much with it in native rgb mode. i had to borrow from the blue channel as some of the others did. i also masked off the top overexposed area and did some work separately there. some of the parts i borrowed on the face i had to duplicate and set the layer to multiply to get enough detail to work with. and one part in there i think i set to luminance, just the black and white part borrowed from the blue. again, this was to get some definition in there.

there was also a LOT of clone, push (smudge) and airbrush. i basically had to reconstruct parts of the face and due to some treatments i used, i had to also remove quite a bit of resulting shadowing.

there were a couple 'clarify' filters in there and a couple of usm's as well. i could never tell you the exact steps and i'm sorry about that. i know you want to learn.

i also pretty much destroyed the background where the overexposure was, so i simply used the bottom part to clone in the top part. i also cropped the picture to an 8 x 10 format.

i had to 'find' the eyes with things like clarify and usm and then had to paint in some detail using what i found as a model.

at one point when i had some detail back in the face, i borrowed the original mouth and surrounding area due to darkening that area with other things. i just did a cut and paste from the original back into the layer i was on and then blended it in with clone and push and airbrush.

no telling how many times i had to back up in my history and redo things. thank god for undo and redo.

there was also some 'soften' in there for when i screwed up the background and had to re-blend the foreground into the new background.

and there was also some 'lighten/darken' on the face to get it lighter but to leave the shadows there.

normally, i would have also at least doubled the image size before working, but for whatever reason, i didnt on this one.

i spent about 3 hours on this. it was a tough piece for me. flora could probably do it in 15 minutes and do it twice as good

[Kraellin]

and, as almost always happens, i look at this now that i've posted it and realized that i probably got the eyes looking the wrong way. having gone back and looked at the blue channel again, i think they are looking straight forward, but this wouldnt be too hard to correct now.

[ziblets]

I'm going to have to investigate and work on some of these techniques. I see references to 'usm' - not sure what that is?
Don't feel bad about not being able to offer the steps - it's the same with me, lots of trial and error, undo, redo, delete history, several copies of layers... just noting basics has been extremely helpful. And I keep saying this but I do truly appreciate everyone's hard work and input.
My plan is to print this out when it's complete and give it as a gift to my mother. I remember when the photo first came back from being developed and how disappointed she was that it didn't turn out... the baby is my sister

[Kraellin]

hi ziblets,

'usm' is 'unsharp mask'. it shld be in your 'sharpen' menu or wherever photoshop puts it. paint shop pro and photoshop both have this. it's also why the ground looks like metal somewhat

[ziblets]

I should have known that. Thanks!

[ShellBen]

Very hard photo to salvage without making it look unatural, or unfamiliar, but I tried it out. I used selective color and adjusted the blacks and neutrals, smart sharpen, paint daubs, smudge, burn, dodge, used a tablet to draw over features and bring them out more. I just threw a whole bunch of stuff on it, hehe.