What post-processing style would suit this image?

[djentley]

The two people are a friend of mine on the right and his friend's younger brother on the left. Anyway, due to the location, my lack of skill and only having a 50mm the photo turned out rather annoyingly bright in the background while my friends are shadowed.



I really want them to be the focus of the image, so - in your experienced eyes - how could I correct that. Would it work making the background almost black and white and amp up the colours on the people, or would that make the image look too forced and fake? It seems overexposed, too.

Junjungan, Ubud - Making the Ogoh Ogoh on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

This was the only very good picture of a child in shadows I could find on my quick search, would this style of processing work? He seems to have dulled the light background.

The size is reduced to post here.

[djentley]

Oh well, this other picture has the same problem, too.

[deadgirlreading]

I don't know what sort of software you have or what exactly you're looking to do but if you're willing to spend a bit of time, you can process the people separate from the background.
As a starting point, I would suggest duplicating the layer, setting it to screen mode, and masking the layer so it only affects the people. I'm not sure what to do about the overexposured sky in the background though.

[djentley]

Originally Posted by deadgirlreading

I don't know what sort of software you have or what exactly you're looking to do but if you're willing to spend a bit of time, you can process the people separate from the background.
As a starting point, I would suggest duplicating the layer, setting it to screen mode, and masking the layer so it only affects the people. I'm not sure what to do about the overexposured sky in the background though.

I do have photoshop CS4 and Lightroom, I wanted opinions on what style of post processing would suit images like this to make them look better.

[vsa]

I think it would benefit from a little warmer tones. The sky is so blown out I doubt you could bring it back with good results. Maybe you have the raw file to make it happen but from a jpg it's not possible.

I took the liberty of making some quick edits myself and here's what I came up with.


Download the psd file if you're interested in taking a peek of what was done. I'll remove the file from my server after a while.

[djentley]

Thank you greatly. You really did ameliorate the picture, not sure on the colours though.

How do you add a vignette without a pure white layer to begin with? I am only at the very beginning of playing around with post processing.

Otherwise, I did try a high contrast black and white with the other, removed, picture and that worked fairly well inspite of my dislike of using black and white that much.

[vsa]

Originally Posted by djentley

How do you add a vignette without a pure white layer to begin with?

Just create new layer, paint the corners with black, change layer blending mode to soft light.
Middle gray doesn't affect anything, everything lighter than that will lighten/dodge the image, everything darker will darken/burn the image. This is very much simplified version of how it works but that should get you started.

Had to check the dictionary what "ameliorate" means. :D

[SusanH1970]

Originally Posted by vsa

I think it would benefit from a little warmer tones. The sky is so blown out I doubt you could bring it back with good results. Maybe you have the raw file to make it happen but from a jpg it's not possible.

I took the liberty of making some quick edits myself and here's what I came up with.


Download the psd file if you're interested in taking a peek of what was done. I'll remove the file from my server after a while.

VERY nice edit. Colors look spot-on and you brightened the boys up a bit from being so underexposed.