Help... Again :)

[MattGlossy]

First of all, a mighty B I G THANK YOU for those who helped out with my first photo request. This will be a special gift for my mother in law. Yes, her complexion now is better in person and digitally too.


Ok, this picture was taken with a low-end digital camera, however the capture of this moment is priceless.

The camera metering is less than optimal and the image quality reflects just that.

When I look at this picture, it reminds me of that lyric"Blinded by the light"

Thanks for your help.

Steven

[MattGlossy]

Image is here (oops)

Steve >Hey knuckle head where's the image?

Steve >Opps here it is!

[Trick]

Thought Threshold was useless, didn't you?

One cool thing about the Threshold adjustment is its total absoluteness...leterally, no gray area. This is one of those images that would be relatively easy to fix if you could actually see where the highlights, shadows and absolute midtones really are.

What you'll want to do is this: Make a Threshold adjustment layer over the regular image. Now, set the level to 220, which is where highlights usually start, yours is probably a bit higher than that...keep switching the preview on and off to compare with the original image. When you find a spot that's supposed to be medium gray but is sitting in the 200-220 range, that's when you've found your problem. hold the shift key down and click on the image, it's going to leave a color sampler in place...and the info palette will tell you the exact values that are there...like say on the girl's PJ's...there ought to be some gray there...and there probably is, you just can't distinguish it from the highlights.

The Threshold will bring it out if it exists...so once you have your sample of an are that's supposed to be light gray, but is coming out white...close Threshold and open curves or levels...I reccomend curves. Why? Command-click on the point sampler you made and a point will appear on your curveline. Just pull that point down a bit, your shadows should start popping up all over the image.

[paulette conlan]

I understand using both the threshold adjustment and the high pass filter to bring out detail but what do you do if a part of a photo is so blown out that there is no data there to work with? In particular, I'm thinking of a photo that someone posted on this site of a family in front of a window. I just can't figure out what you could do to improve a photo where there is no information.

Paulette

[Trick]

Unfortunately, when there's nothing there to work with, there simply is nothing there to work with. Photoshop is a great program, but it doesn't work miracles.

A good example of this is something that I'll probably end up posting on my site, once it's done...don't go there, yet, it takes forever to load and it isn't finished...but for right now, I'll just post the starting file.

It started as a piece that was given to me during my days at Kinko's...it's a picture of a lady's mother as a child, but her face was scratched out by a racist woman (also in the picture, apparently) and she simply wanted the face replaced...what was necessary was something not in existence...a picture of the woman's mother at the same age.

Solution: a picture of HER (the client) at the same age, since they apprently looked exactly the same...I just had to replace missing information.

The other thing that works is to simply paint in what you think should be there...Photoshop's painting tools and features are absolute dynamite, and I've seen them turn talentless people into incredible artists, but the work still needs to be done...it can't be done automatically.

Now, I don't know if this kind of advice will help, but like I said, if there's no data, there's no data...

Perhaps if you posted the photo you're working on I may be able to find a better solution for you.