Help me rescue this family in RAW

[Scatterbrain]

I took a number of photographs similar to this one on a shoot I did a couple of days ago. I have them as RAW files so I'm hoping I can edit them well enough to rescue the people (who are clearly underexposed). I'd like to keep the colours in the sky etc but lighten up the people.


I have Digital Photo Professional to open the RAW file and PSE5 for the final editing. I have very little experience of editing RAW files.

Any suggestions on where to start? What would you do to rescue this family?

Thanks.

Scatterbrain

[ttosifa]

I don't know anything about PSE or your other software, but I don't think the people are "clearly underexposed." Maybe a tad, but that's it.

Instead, the picture was taken when the sunlight was directional, giving "hard shadows." This means that the transition from the correctly exposed parts of the faces to the shadows is very sharp. The shadows here are also very dense.

Your best bet is probably to work with some type of shadows/highlights or fill light feature if PSE has such. Even so, it will be difficult to get significant improvement without making the picture looked processed or noisy.

Be careful with increasing overall exposure or brightness because you can easily start clipping the reds in the faces, giving splotchiness. There is some wiggle room with RAW if you can adjust recovery. Good luck. I think it would have been a great picture if the mother had been facing the camera a little more!

[OsmosisStudios]

Youd be better off trying to use some sort of "fill light: function, like the one found in ACR5.xx

[kirbinster]

You need to upload the raw file to something like rapidshare.com if you want us to give it a go.