Stuck like Chuck

[7890]

Hi everyone,

Ive got a new image that I could use some help with. I took this picture of my cousin in the Ouray Co. mountains and would really like to salvage the picture. I've included a link to the reduced original and an example of the best I could do.

Original

My Attempt

Please advise on corrective methods used, I failed to set my camera and have a slew of shots with this problem.

Thanks in advance

Greg

[Flashtones]

Not sure what you mean by "salvage" the shot. You gave him a tummy tuck.

Could you be more specific about what you'd like to accomplish?

[0lBaldy]

Did you mean something like a single image HDR Tonemap as discussed in the HDR/HDRi and Tone Mapping Forum

larger image here

[7890]

I upped another version in case the tummy tuck was too distracting for you, Flash I thought the problem would be obvious, but I should have explained: It's the color and harshness. Even after Auto Tone and Auto Color, the image is just hard to look at.

Thanks for the efforts Baldy. Your clouds definitely better represent the actual scene. Maybe the greenery in the foreground is what makes the image appear so harsh. Would this be considered blown-out or washed-out highlights? Any preferred technique to dim it down a bit?

[0lBaldy]

Maybe not a preferred method but a method that might work..

loosely select the offending foreground... Ctrl+J to put it on its own layer
hold the Alt key down whilst selecting a hue/saturation adjustment layer from the bottom of the layer pallet (half black and white circle)
name it 'foreground correction' and check the 'group with previous layer' box.. OK
Adjust yellows and greens using the sliders till the offending areas look OK
paint black on mask to hide unwanted changes in the foreground

Or a curves layer selected the same way

[Nasturtium]

It has a blue cast and is overexposed

you can get rid of the blue cast with a levels or curves adjustment layer, take the middle eye dropper and click on something that you know is black, white or neutral gray

I chose to make the blown highlights yellow (sorry I really LIKE yellow :-) )

which you can do either with color balance (choose highlights and slide towards yellow)
or
with selective color, choose absolute and whites and then make them yellow (or any color you like)

HTH

[Flashtones]

Originally Posted by 7890

I upped another version in case the tummy tuck was too distracting for you, Flash

I don't mind the tummy tuck, I was just confused if you were trying to "salvage" the tonality or his dignity.

There's plenty to work with in the image, you can do a lot with it. It's not even close to being unsalvageable.

Anyway, this getting better? Gone too far? Not enough?

[7890]

Thanks for the correct diagnoses, suggestions, and examples guys. I had a hard time defining the problem, I just knew it was harsh. Your suggestions give me a proper starting point to address it now. I'll post my results when I'm done.

He'll get that tummy tuck in the final, and since he's never seen the original, I have no intentions of letting him know

[mistermonday]

The Flashtones has pointed out the image is quite salvageable. It does have a distinct blue cast across it - combination of the blue sky but also the white balance on the camera. If you have Photoshop, you can mostly fix the image by opening it in Adobe Camera RAW. Shift the temperature sliders to reduce the blue, tweak the exposure and contrast, slightly sharpen.
The face has a bunch of noise and mixture of color so you really need to fix that when you bring the image into PS.
I did a really quick liquify on the tummy but you can probably do a much better job spending a little time on it.
Regards, Murray

[mistermonday]

Well, in revisiting the image I posted earlier it seems to green. Rather than tweaking it I took the original image and applied Picto's 1 touch color correct filter and it seems to have done a super job at rebalancing the color across the whole image. The sky looks pretty realistic given the ambient amount of sunlight. Nothing else done. The face needs to be de-magentafied plus a few other tweaks. But you should have a very good final product.
Best Rgds
Murray

[falem]

My version.

[chas18052]

gave it a try---used a sepia filter and then a new layer filled with 50% gray/overlay mode painted with black and white

[unimatrix001]

I used a plugin called colorwasher. removed the blue colorcast and enhanced the shadows.

[7890]

mistermonday, I did have the WB improperly set and discovered it only after the first day. Considering that I have a whole day's worth of pictures with this blue cast, I'm hoping the Picto's or the colorcast plugin, mentioned by unimatrix001, will save me some time.

Thanks for your effort falem. Did you take a stab at the blue cast on the hills in the background? the blue color cast remains on my end.

chase, I like the shadowing on your image. I may try to add a little of that as well.

I hope to tackle this picture tomorrow and call it a day. Again, I appreciate all of the perspectives and effort here.

I added more pictures to share some of what we saw, while on vacation. I'd like to revisit this place and can only hope my picture taking abilities are much better next time.

A few Ouray Co. Pictures

[Flashtones]

Originally Posted by 7890

Considering that I have a whole day's worth of pictures with this blue cast, I'm hoping the Picto's or the colorcast plugin, mentioned by unimatrix001, will save me some time.

You might want to download Lightroom 3 beta. It's free and usable thru April 2010. In it you can make adjustments to one image and then sync those adjustments across any number of images.

So if your day's take all has a similar cast all you'd need to do it is use the white balance eye dropper and apply it to a neutral in your image (perhaps the gray foam on the roll bar) and this will neutralize your color cast. Then adjust expose, contrast, saturation, clarity, sharpening, etc to suit, and then sync all those adjustments across the entire days take with the click of a button.

[7890]

Roger that. Thanks Flash.

[dcmcintosh79]

Hey all,

This is my first post in the forum.

I tried out a few techniques I learned from Dan Margulis's courses on color/contrast on KelbyTraining.com.

Here's what I came up with...seems the WB setting really did a number on the sky.

Oh well, I would definitely check out his classes...I think you'd like what they do for landscape photos.

[dcmcintosh79]

Hmmm....having trouble posting the file. Are we really limited to 100 kb?