Large group in a church

[dhart]

I was asked to take a photo of my church's staff in the church. The light was focused from the stage lights above and my flash wasn't working (I think it had to do with distance and line of sight for the infrared). So the SOOTC shot had a crazy vignette effect from the overhead focused lights and whatever light came from the pop-up flash (it was in commander mode and fill).



Camera: Nikon D80
Exposure: 0.01 sec (1/100)
Aperture: f/7.1
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed: 500
Exposure Bias: 0/6 EV
Flash: Flash fired, auto mode
ISO Speed: 500

Obviously I am losing people at the edges, so after fixing the white balance and levels and such in the RAW window, I used a semi-HDR effect to balance the vignette and came up with this:



How I did it:

1. Adjust the levels, contrast, white balance and general stuff for the brighter people in the middle. I shoot in RAW, so I did all of this in the RAW editor in CS3.

2. Save photo (as psd in this case) and note in the file name that it is the base exposure (to keep track of versions).

3. Open the RAW file again and only change the exposure -1.00 from the previous file. Save As and note exposure in file name.

4. Repeat step 3 so you end up with 3 different files, with a 1.00 difference in exposure between each file.

5. Stack the lighter versions of the photo on top of the darker (in order of brightness, darker to lighter)

6. Mask the middle version and black out all the over exposed people so the bottom layer shows through on the brightest people only.

7. Alt+mask the lightest layer to create a black mask on the lightest layer.

8. Paint with white over the darkest people on the edges. I only did the faces since the noise in the red shirts and dark pants had a lot of noise. I also used some gray and a soft brush (pressure sensitive) to fade and blend in the hair and such. By using the black mask instead of the white, it allows the darker background to stay dark and not as noisy.

9. I also cloned the background to get rid of the stage equipment. Most of the cloning was done on the second layer.

10. That's it. Since this was a group shot, I just judged from person to person on where the masking should fall. Some people have gray masks to either slightly darken or lighten their faces. Most of the clothing is actually exposed darker than the hands and faces because the red was really noisy and the whites lost detail in the brightness.

Any comments, critiques, or suggestions are very welcome. This is my first attempt at HDR type of editing. I glanced over another tutorial here and ran with it, so I am not even sure what I did could be considered HDR! Thanks.

[private]

WOW! What an improvement...

[AnnetteJ]

You certainly evened it out! Looks tricky. Only thing is, now the reds look rather flat, in the original they glowed out of the dark, which I liked. Maybe they needed a little toning down, but they look somewhat desaturated now.

[dhart]

Originally Posted by AnnetteJ

You certainly evened it out! Looks tricky. Only thing is, now the reds look rather flat, in the original they glowed out of the dark, which I liked. Maybe they needed a little toning down, but they look somewhat desaturated now.

I see what you mean about the reds, but when I brightened the photo, the reds looked more pink than red. So, I took the luminescence down a bit and the red came back. I can play with it a little.

[DigitalCamerasAustralia]

Good improvement.