a picture of my dad....

[mygosssh]

i took this pic during our family swimming vacation outing...
w/ my sony DSC-S45

[jiminyClickit]

mygosssh, Welcome

Hope there's a way you can present a larger version of your photo. This one is apparently very high contrasted, but if you were going for backlighting, it might be OK. Just can't tell at this size.

Using Yahoo!'s Zoom feature, from what I can see, you could do a little fixing and have a pleasant portrait. Is this original, or have you cropped from a larger photo?

[clockdoc]

Hi mygosssh,
It looks like you possibly shot this in the auto mode and your dad was under some sort of shade. The camera "saw" all the bright area behind your dad and set the exposure accordingly such that your dad ended up underexposed and somewhat dark. Your camera may have a backlight compensation setting or a spot meter that you can use to meter the subject for proper exposure. Please ask questions if I have confued you in any way. Welcome to the group.

[mygosssh]

@jiminyClickit
it's fine w/ me if you wanted to edit & repost for DPS
for that would be one way for me to learn new things....
i'm new at this.....& i really wanted to learn.


@clockdoc
ur right i shot this auto mode,i'm still learnig how my camera works
i got this as a gift....
thanks for welcoming me.

[jiminyClickit]

mygosssh,

Is it possible you could post a larger photo?

[mygosssh]

when i post this pic it says i exceed tha limit size...

here's a link of the larger image-->

http://img472.imageshack.us/img472/2797/dsc00367jt7.jpg


i'm new & i really want to learn

[jiminyClickit]

mygosssh,

Thank you, that's a good size, and it does show that some of the background is very light, which can be fixed. Your dad's features are strong and show well in the photo. If you have software that you edit with, I'll see if I can find ways to bring the two parts of your photo together.

You will find many new things here, and soon your photos will be very,very good. I see it happen every week. That's the best part of DPS. Your dad's photo will take awhile; I'll try to repost about 2 hours from now.

[wulf]

Here is my take. It pulls a lot more detail out from your father and emphasise the texture of his skin. It could do with more work but that would take too much time for a quick demo!

First, I used the curves tool to bring up the light on him. The background got even more overexposed but that would be a separate strand of processing to fix.

I then bumped up the contrast because the picture was looking washed out. I did this by creating a duplicate layer and setting it in overlay mode. I wanted more of the same effect so repeated that with a second duplicate in overlay mode. This time I also blurred the image a bit and reduced opacity to about 80%, for a softer effect.

Happy with that, I flattened the work so far and resized the image so that it would be small enough to upload back on DPS (500px for the longest length is the rule of thumb I work to for a rectangular picture).

To finish, I created another duplicate layer and applied the unsharp mask took (radius - 8.4; amount - 0.74; threshold - 11... all settings adjusted by eye). That was a little bit too vivid, so I changed the layer to "value" mode which softened it a bit without losing all the sharpness.

I'll be interested to see what Jiminy comes up with - whether it is similar or completely different.

Wulf

ps. All editing was done with The Gimp

[jiminyClickit]

wulf, similar with another hour on it . . .

mygosssh,

More to it than I thought, but completely salvagable. There is another hour's work that could bring it up to total believability, but I'll stop here and see what you think. You know how it should look. It is a good photo.

[wulf]

Yours is more natural, although the background is still a problem (in my version it is completely burned out and in yours it looks like a printed backdrop).

It is amazing how much can be recovered from a picture but sometimes the best answer is just to shoot it again. In the same set up, it would help to have had extra light on the subject (flash or some kind of reflector). It might also have been good to take several shots, some exposed so the background was rich and some exposed for the shadier area.

Wulf