Please help correcting black color in pictures

[santiagodechile]

Is there a way to correct this?

I'm making a family project and would really appreciate any help!

 

[RTContent]

Please explain what you mean by 'correct'. Do you mean try and reveal more detail in the black part of the image? If so I'm afraid you might be out of luck. It looks like this image is completely underexposed and no extra detail to be found.

 

[santiagodechile]

Not really looking for more detail just looking to make the background more uniform to where it is not distracting to the viewer. They will be viewed on a 55" tv in a slideshow. Also, sorry I forgot to mention that I have only uploaded part of a picture If needed I could upload the whole picture.
Thanks!

 

[Paul]

How did it get like that in the first place is my question?

 

[santiagodechile]

Basically it was one of those shots with the flash that light up the subject and leave the background very dark. I should have uploaded the whole thing from the start sorry to waste your time with just a portion of it. Ill upload as soon as I get home. Thanks!

 

[santiagodechile]

This is the whole picture I've been referring to. I have several of these that I hope to make better.

Thanks!

 

[santiagodechile]

Now that I think about it however. Do you think that they look worse due to the encoding when I make the slideshow? I'm using iDvd & iMovie (I know it's terrible, but I'm inserting the slideshow into a project where the clips where exported on a mac and have the Apple Inter. Codec, and I haven't found a way to convert the clips so that I can work with them in Premiere.

 

[iDad]

You could probably selected the two subjects and then inverse your selection and change the exposure to darker but I'm still not sure whether I understand thats what you wantt

 

[raid2506]

Are you trying to do something like this?



Or to make the entire background darker?

 

[santiagodechile]

Yes that works! I would really like to know how to do that!

Thanks!!

 

[Tom Mann]

The problem with the original image is the uneven lighting. There are differences in both intensity and color as you go from one area to another. For example, look at the difference in color warmth between the face of the woman (too cool), and the face of the man. In addition, because the subjects are very close to the flash, you get a "shine" (reflection) from the fabric of the suits and they don't look believably black. Finally, there is a lot of distractions in the backgrounds on the RHS.

To do a good job, the process involves several steps, so be prepared to work methodically, ie, it will take you some time.

The way I attack such a photo is to start by carefully masking each area that will need separate correction (eg, subjects, background, faces, suits, etc.), and then, treat each one separately with an appropriate tool(s) such as curves, shadows/highlights, color adjustments, etc. I cleared up the RH background by simply copying the LH background, flipping it horizontally, as pasting it over the busy background on the RHS.

If you have specific questions, don't hesitate.

Tom

 

[Tom Mann]

PS - If you want to go in the right direction, but don't want to get involved with all the masking and individual area tweaks, a quick-and-dirty fix is just to apply the shadow-highlights tool to the entire image. It certainly won't look as good, but it will get you started, and may be good enough for your needs, ie, TV.

HTH,

Tom M

 

[IamSam]

PS - If you want to go in the right direction, but don't want to get involved with all the masking and individual area tweaks, a quick-and-dirty fix is just to apply the shadow-highlights tool to the entire image. It certainly won't look as good, but it will get you started, and may be good enough for your needs, ie, TV.

Tom thanks for this little tidbit of information! This is a Ps function that I have overlooked until now but I believe it can be very useful in correcting minor lighting imperfections.

I found a nice tutorial on the "Shadow/Highlights" function that shows how to achieve acceptable results. Thanks again........great tip!

 

[Tom Mann]

Hey, Sam - Glad to have helped. Yup, if you are already past the point of using ACR on your raw file, and need the shadows lifted a bit or the highlights tamed a bit, it is extremely useful.

I find ACR even better than the shadow /hilights tool for this sort of problem, so another, albeit more complicated option is to generate a temporary TIF, use ACR on it and bring it back into PS that way.


Tom

 

[MikeMc]

Hey, Sam - Glad to have helped. Yup, if you are already past the point of using ACR on your raw file, and need the shadows lifted a bit or the highlights tamed a bit, it is extremely useful.

I find ACR even better than the shadow /hilights tool for this sort of problem, so another, albeit more complicated option is to generate a temporary TIF, use ACR on it and bring it back into PS that way.


Tom

WOW....I thought of ACR first....didn't work as well as I thought it could...The tiff idea is great, gonna play that way now. I am having fits with the shine, BUT this is a great learning tool !

 

[Tom Mann]

Yup, the shine was a definite annoyance, if not a full-fledged PITA.

I didn't even try to come up with some sort of a global fix for it, knowing that doing so would have wrecked the contrast on all the other areas in the image with similar brightness. Instead, I initially made a bunch of selections that I thought would be useful, so I just used one of those to restrict my tweak (for the shine) to just the black clothing.

Also, I didn't want to completely remove it because I felt that would make the clothing look unrealistic and obliterate the difference between the fabric of the man's clothing and the fabric of the woman's clothing. However, neither did I want it as prominent as it is in Raid's tweaked version.

My approach was kinda brute force, but quick: I treated it the same way I reduce oil shine on people's faces - I tend to use the patch tool to simply bring in texture from an area that isn't shiny, and then adjust the opacity to get a nice compromise. In the next message, I'll post the maximum effect of the patch tool, ie, before using the "Fade previous adjustment" control.

T

PS - Minor correction: When I wrote the above, I had forgotten that it took several applications of the patch tool, so, instead of using the "Fade previous adjustment" slider, I just put all the patch tool results on its own layer and then adjusted them all at once.

 

[Tom Mann]

And, here's the result of a few applications of the patch tool to the shine. This shows the maximum effect. It was on its own layer, so, for the final use, I then reduced the opacity of that layer to leave some realism / distinction between the two fabrics.

Unfortunately, I had merged layers in the PSD file that I save, so I had to regenerate this, but it gives you the idea.

T