Could use some help on this picture

[cendres]

This is probably a no brainer for most of you, but I was hoping for some advice on a retouch of a photo of my wife and son. Below is a link.

http://home.attbi.com/~cendres3/images/new_photo_images/mikemomweb.jpg

When I shot this picture I used a 500 watt work light since my camera takes bad pics in low light situations.

While the light helped, it actually lit up my sons face more than I would like. It reflects this on the printed piece even more so than on my monitor.

What suggestions could you make to help with this?

Thanks in advance - Carl

[jeaniesa]

Carl,

I just tried selecting your son's face (and ears), feathering the selection (I used 5), new layer via copy and change layer to multiply blending mode at 60% opacity, then reduced the saturation of that layer (I think I used -30 or -40). I've attached the result. Don't know if this reduces the highlights enough for you, but the face doesn't look quite so washed out. You could try reduing the contrast on the copied layer before flattening to reduce the highlights a bit.

Jeanie

[jeaniesa]

Rats - hit "submit" before "browse". The photo is here.

Great picture by the way.

Jeanie

[DJ Dubovsky]

You could also duplicate the layer and use the multiply blend mode with a layer mask that hides all just paint in the face with white foreground color at 100% opacity then lower the opacity of the layer until you get the results you want. That way you can adjust it later if you don't like the results or just dump the layer. Incidently, nice looking family you got there Carl.
DJ

[jeaniesa]

Right - what DJ said! (I've got to remember to use masks a LOT more than I do.) -Jeanie

[thomasgeorge]

Just a suggestion... Like DJ said, mask the young gentlemans face, then, duplicate to seperate layer, set blend mode to multiply, reduce opacity to around 50% or so, grab the eyedropper tool and sample a nicely toned area of skin and with the airbrush set around 50% or so and mode normal, touch up the real bright spots. I took the liberty of applying these steps to your photo and have attached it below. Hope that was OK, if not, I apologise. Good luck, Tom

[cendres]

Wow,

I am so impressed with the helpfulness of this group! I look forward to trying all your different methods, I probably will have a question or two once I actually try it myself.

From the samples of the retouch I saw, all of them dramatically improve the picture and gave me exactly the results I was hoping for.

Also, thanks for the kind comments on my family, I am a lucky guy.

Thanks again - Carl

[wof43]

Hi all.......

I'm new here and was just looking around. I decided to do a quick response to this thread.

I have PS 6, but I mostly use Picture Publisher. This one is pretty easy in Pic Pub. I just reduced the ambient light in this shot and re-lit the scene with 2 floods and a spot. Then, of course, tweaked the contrast and adjusted the color a bit. Took about 5 minutes----that's why I like Pic Pub.

regards,
wof

[wof43]

well, I thought I attached the pic---I'll try again.........

[Hankster65]

Nice job, WOF. (and welcome aboard!) I may have to check out Pic Pub. Five minutes for that good of a fix is impressive.

[DJ Dubovsky]

Hey Wof
Glad you joined us. Your picture turned out great. Picture Publisher, not bad if that's an example of what it can do.
DJ

[cendres]

Hey Wof,

Welcome aboard. I feel honored you picked my picture as your first submission.

Just curious, you mentioned " I changed the ambient light..." Can you elaborate a little on what you did to do that. I am not familiar with Picture Publisher, but maybe I can incorporate into the editing programs I use.

Take care and great job - Carl

[wof43]

Thanks for the kind words, all.

Carl: The ambient light control is essentially a brightness control. I don' t know if it works exactly the same---I would have to check the histograms and color levels. In any case, in the Light Studio, you think of it as a dimmer switch on your room lights. It allows you to turn down the room lights (if necessary) when you are setting your spots, floods, directional, and non-directional (omni) lights.

My thinking is that it may be POSSIBLE to duplicate the lighting functions in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, BUT it would be a very difficult endeavor.

Micrografx (now owned by Corel) just came out with Picture Publisher 10 Pro. It's quite a bit more expensive than Picture Publisher 9 (list is $199--I think---- street price is usually much lower)

You can go to their web-site and download a free, fully functional, 30-day demo of PP-10 Pro.......this is the download page.

http://www.micrografx.com/resources/

You make be able to still find PP9 somewhere----I think I gave about $40-$50 about a year ago for 9. Still using it until PP10 hits the streets locally.

I have Photoshop Elements and the freebie download of Photoshop 6.0, ---also used PSP7 and Ulead PhotoImpact but I prefer using Pic Pub-----just personal preference.


regards,
wof

[George]

Had to try it in Photoshop 6.01. The attached file took two minutes. Copied photo, used Filter > Render > Llight effects set as follows:
Style: 2 O'clock, Type: Spotlight, Intensity: 17, Focus: 91, Gloss: -67, Material: -58, Exposure: 0, and Ambience: -7. Then used the Level Adjustment to lighten up photo some. I believe with a few more adjustments, you could get the image to look just as you want with very little effort and time.

George

[Mig]

This effect can be done in ps. I didn't use the lighting effects filter. Instead, I made a darkish grayscale of the background copy, blurred it quite siginificantly and then changed the blend mode of this layer to multiply, then reduced the opacity. Then added layer masks and colour corrected it, among other things.
It probably took about 20 minutes. The results from Picture Publisher are good, but I doubt there's something - along these lines anyway - that that program can do that ps can't.

Mig