photo help

[cyberwasp]

I haven't been here in a long time. Ayway to keep in touch with my family I go onto facebook now and than. My niece post a lot of picture, some of which I grab, retouch and post again. Recently she's posted a few that seem to escape my abilities.

The problem is they are mostly backlit so I usually start out with Shadows/highlights. Except recently when doing this the subject get a weird glow to it that I can't get rid of. So I thought I'd post it to ask for your expertise. TIA

[genf]

Re: photo help

I tried to process this image and found it very hard to get a satisfactory result. It's possible to get detail back in the persons while suppressing the glow, but this causes ugly JPG artifacts. Presumably this is due to the dark original in combination with low quality JPG suppression.
Anyway, here is my version. It may give you an idea what is possible, but I am sure others are able to get better results.

[cyberwasp]

Re: photo help

One of my attempts was similar but I discarded it. I just think the photo is beyond restoration. I told her to make sure she uses the flash next time or at least watch the background. Thank you for the effort though as I know I don't know most of the tricks.

[Vernon]

Re: photo help

Would you have a sample of the glow effect to show?

The image's contrast is too low and that may be where the challenge is in trying to bring up lines where the image is most "muddy".

Try to sample the color of the light "wrapping" around your subjects - it will be a blue hue.
Create a layer above your image set to color.
Fill it with the color you sampled.
Invert it (Ctrl+i) then reduce opacity until it nullifies the blue hue.
It will not eliminate the light wrapping around the subjects but it will allow you to reduce it somewhat now that it is a more neutral color.

To sharpen, dupe the image onto a new layer, do a high pass layer, set it to linear light and reduce opacity to taste.

[0lBaldy]

Re: photo help

My feeble effort using a couple defined patterns.. one from the original and another from an Equalized copy... Using Multiply and Screen with the Pattern Stamp tool to even things out along with a tad bit of cloning, and masking

[Copperbat]

Re: photo help

Tough one. I was able to salvage a little detail in the faces by separating out the green channel and using that as a contrast-enhancement layer. There's a lot of loss in this photo, though.

megtuned.jpg

[skoobey]

Re: photo help

Mask things