Can I salvage this shot?

[kristenh]

It's tough to get my little guy to look directly at the camera, and here the sun also catches his eyes. really like it...but dopey mom's shadow is on his face. i'm not experienced with post production; can it be salvaged?

DSC_0364_2010-08-29_17-30 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

(first time posting a photo; hope i did it right)

[Photologyst]

Hi Kristen:

Initially I considered removing the strange shadow. Then I decided to work with it and intensify it for more dramatic portrait effects. So here are 5 versions for you to consider.

Flickr: Photologyst's Photostream

1) Portrait Professional Studio for general adjustments. You could clean up errant pixels in PPS, but I prefer using Photoshop for that. The eyes had a number of errant pixels due to the lighting.

2) Photoshop for pixel cleanup and background cloning as well as shadow intensifying or posterizing only the weird shadow area via adjustment layer: exposure. (You could do this in Elements as well.)

3) Lightroom for the black and white as well as the aged effect. (This can also be done in PS or Elements, but it’s easier in Lightroom.

All 5 photos took about an hour, only because I contemplated a great deal as to whether to remove the shadow on that cute baby.

[mitawa]

Hello Kristen,

Your little guy's really cute. Photologyst has done great job to turn them into nice portraits. But if you want full face & that shadow removed, that can be done... but it will be little cumbersome. I did a quick work (less than 5 minutes) and here's the result.


I know it doesn't look finished product & have also lost few details. But as I said this was a quick job, only to show that this is possible. You have to be patient with dodge, burn tools, curves and clone tools if you have access to photoshop.

[edbayani]

yes this can be fixed by selecting the shadow using the quickmask and brush the area with the shadow. exit quickmask and copy the selected shadow area to another layer and with color balance add re and little yellow. you can adjust more with levels to approximate the color of the area without the shadow, flatten and save.

[zona5101]

edbayani - your post work is always very well done & well controlled.

[edbayani]

thank you bruce!

[Photologyst]

Well done, Ed!

Could you please post your processing technique/sequence and all of the PS tools that you used?

[edbayani]

thank you Plogyst.
so many ways to do this but what i did was:
i used quickmask as selection tool by pressing Q and painting with a soft brush all the areas in the shadow. exited quicmask and pressed ctrl/J to put the selected shadow area in another layer. pressed ctrl B for color balance and added red and some yellow to balance the color with the areas not in the shadow. used levels for further adjustments. also used the clone tool and checked sample all layers and used soft brush at 20% opacity and brushed the edges to blend it with the lower layer. flattened and with levels adjusted the overall brightness and contrast.

[kristenh]

thank you all so much for your help. i have elements 8 and wonder edbayani, whether what you describe would work there or are you using the real photoshop? i'm quite amazed at how you could get rid of that shadow that way- i will give it a whirl (when he is 18 and i have some free time).

photolygist- thank you for taking the time to try the various options you posted. i like some of them quite a bit- they look kind of mysterious!

mitawa, thank you, too, for your illustration.

i'm glad this thread got rerouted to somewhere with helpful folks like yourselves

[Photologyst]

Hello Kristen:

Glad to help. That boy is too cute!

I had some time today and did a “conventional” portrait and a Sepia (converted in Lightroom).

I believe that these would work with Elements as well.



As Ed mentioned there are so many ways to do this. “All roads lead to Rome,” or the end PS product. Here are the steps that I used:

Make 2 layer copies.

Turn off original layer

Change blend mode to “screen” (this will lighten things quite a bit.)

Merge layers

Make another copy

Select area for lightening

Feather selected area

Select inverse and hit delete

Change blend mode to “screen” again

In a new layer use color balance and levels for final adjustments

You may also have to use the clone and heal tools to blend the edges.





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Thanks for the info Ed.