How can I lighten her face?

[elkidogz]

so this is my first real attempt at using lightroom(2.1) and While I feel good about this picture, I am not feeling like it lived up to my expectations. Before is first after is second... I would really like to get her face to lighten up for more detail, but I've no idea how... I'm still learning this tool (obvious huh?) please give as much advice as possible. Where did I go wrong?



Camera: Nikon D60
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/2000)
Aperture: f/11.0
Focal Length: 90 mm
Focal Length: 89.8 mm
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire

[PhotoPhix]

Originally Posted by elkidogz

so this is my first real attempt at using lightroom(2.1) and While I feel good about this picture, I am not feeling like it lived up to my expectations. Before is first after is second... I would really like to get her face to lighten up for more detail, but I've no idea how... I'm still learning this tool (obvious huh?) please give as much advice as possible. Where did I go wrong?



Camera: Nikon D60
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/2000)
Aperture: f/11.0
Focal Length: 90 mm
Focal Length: 89.8 mm
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire

You cannot save what is not there sorry, when you took the shot the camera metered for the bright areas of your framing and therfoe underexposed the darker face area. If you see by my edit, what was salvagable comes with quite a bit of noise. Next time try using a fill flash to help with the shadows.


Armando

[davidloy001]

Thats really nice ...thanks for sharing these pictures..its really beautiful...i liked them very much

[elkidogz]

Good advice, I'll take another shot of her on another clear day like that. Thanks!

[sjlarue]

Originally Posted by elkidogz

Good advice, I'll take another shot of her on another clear day like that. Thanks!

Ha! you live in Cincinnati, You've had your only clear day for the year!

When you get a blue sky...next year, use a little fill flash. And change to spot meter on your camera to see if that helps. You could also bump up the exposure compensation and then correct it in LR using the Color sliders.

If you are not shooting in RAW, you might want to try it, I get a lot correcting power because of it...Of course I use CS3 and ACR but you should still get some benefit in lightroom from shooting in RAW.

[Edsport]

Opened it in photoshop, selected her face and used curves to brighten her face. Removed some noise also...

[idontknow97]

Dont know if it will help but there is a free program called picasa and they have one that if this happens you can adjust the fill flas after but I dont know, I will see if I can play around with it but if not try that.

[idontknow97]

Hi I tried but it also gives the grainy effect sorry

[mrgump]

try this and see how you get on
1) open light room and choose develop
2) select the adjustment brush
3) using the [ & ] keys resize the brush so its just larger than her face
4) move the exposure slider till you get the effect you want "go gentle as it will ad grain"
5) good luck

[Jim Poor]

Play with the fill slider in LR