Need help with dark image

[trtldove76]

Well My friend asked me to restore this photo for her I am pretty good at most stuff but I am having a real problem with this one. It is really driving me nuts. So I figured I would ask for help! She said she thought maybe a black background would look good. But I am sure if we can save this picture she would be grateful as it means alot to her. Her flash died this night so camera malfunction. So any help or advice would be just grateful. thank you!

Ok a couple of replies down you will find the larger picture!

[cricket1961]

Hard to work something out with such a small shot. is there a larger version available?

Chris

[trtldove76]

Thank you Chris I know it is so small maybe you can help me upload a bigger picture. When I hit attachment it said 100k or smaller. I tried a bunch desizing things and this is what I got. Is there an easier way. Thank you so very much!

[trtldove76]

Ok I think it worked!

[Dave.Cox]

That appears to be an enlargement of the thumbshot. Too low a resolution and poor quality to do much with. Do you not have the original?

[mistermonday]

I have a couple of suggestions. The 1st is to apply a noise filter like Noiseware to remove the color noise you will get when you lighten an underexposed image. What you will get are the bears against an almost black background. If you do not mind that effect (and it actually doesn't look too bad) just adjust the brightness and the color of the bears using a Hue Sat adj layer perhaps to make them less yellow.
If you are determined to have your subject appear on the snow as if it were closer to daylight, don't try to brighten the snow - it won't really work. Instead, duplicate the image after noise reduction, invert the whole image and add a layer mask. Then just paint the bears back in on the layer mask. Finally apply a hue sat adj to adjust the brightness and tweak the color of the animals. Here is a 10 second example where I did a rough brush around the bears leaving some of the orig background. If you spend 5 mins you could trace around them precisely.
Regards, Murray

[duwayne]

Why fight it! The image has the makings of a nice Black & White.

[mistermonday]

Duwayne, I agree withthe "why fight it" comment and definitely like what you have done as well.
Regards, Murray

[Kraellin]

i like both of your solutions. hadnt thought of the inversion and the black and white is a nice choice.

[trtldove76]

Oh thank you for all the Ideas. Duwayne did you JUST turn this to B and W or did you do other stuff to give more detail? I thought I would try both and show them to her then let her choose which she liked!

[duwayne]

Thanks Murray and Craig for the nice comments. I don't always take the easiest way out but I really like working with Black & White. I tried to restore the original color but just got a bunch of trash. Maybe working on the original high-resolution image would have given better results.

trtldove76 – Here’s the details if you want to try it on the high-resolution image. It takes longer to read this than to actually do.

I started with two passes through NeatImage noise filter reducing 1/2 the noise at each pass. On the results of the second pass I did a Local Contrast Enhancement using the Unsharp Mask tool with settings of Amount=20, Radius= 80 and Threshold=0. Duplicate this layer and use High-Pass filter to boost global contrast.

Because of the amount of trash in the background I masked off the upper half (without the bears), copied to a new layer and did a Level Adjustment moving the white output slider (lower right) to the left.

The actual conversion to B&W was done using the Russell Brown method that mimics color filters and B&W film. Create two Hue/Saturation Adjustment layers above the image layer. For the lower of the two (color filter layer), change blending mode to color. On the other (film layer) move the saturation slider all the way to the left. Now, double click the lower of the two Hue/Saturation layers and move the Hue slider to find the best B&W rendering. I used Hue= -124 but your taste might be different.

I finished the image with a Curve Adjustment layer on top to tweak to taste.

[trtldove76]

Thank you very much. I worked on them a bunch last night and to be honest I am not very good at bringing detail back from darkness when it is also so grainy. And to be completely honest the original is just as bad. hmmmm

So thank you for all your help I really appreciate it!

[Dave.Cox]

Great solutions guys. I admit, I hadn't thought of doing that.