Blown hat...please help!

Cav

Cav

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Hello peeps,

I've taken, rather surprisingly to self, to portraits and one of the things I've tried playing with is wider angle portraits which capture the background also, as I'm trying to show the environment/mood in the face and tie the two together...or something like that. Only one model though, lol!

This is a shot of my daughter in one of NZ's beech forests. I wanted to capture her in the dappled sunlight which I did, however, one of the said dapples scorched her hat at the front and has trashed the shot (some moron didn't check prior to moving on...). Is there anything I can do to rescue the photo?

img01363lw.jpg
 
Hi.. lovely little girl!

Just a few things which might help for the future.
I see you have used pattern metering. This is known for not being able to cope with extremes of lighting like you have here. A better idea would be to use partial metering and get the important parts sorted out..ie the highlights. You could meter from her hat and that would be right, then if the darker shadows are too dark that isnt so bad, they can be brought out in photoshop or whatever you use.
I also feel that the background in so much detail could have been a bit more blurred to make the girl stand out more. Try using a larger aperture, F4 maybe.

As for rescue,, you could try the highlights/shadows tool in photoshop or maybe you could used dodge/burn and burn some shadows onto it.
With hightlights once theyve completely gone there is no rescuing unfortunately, which is why its wise to make sure they are correct first.:)
 
Janice is right.

In a nutshell. Once a highlight is blown it's gone for good.
I go by the rule that shadows are recoverable (to an extent), highlights aren't, so if I had the choice of either underexposing a part of a shot, or overexposing, then I would choose to underexpose.

However, just because the highlights are blown, doesn't mean that all is not lost. You may be able to tone down the blown highlights with some selective dodging and burning as suggested.
 
Others have posted while I have done this and their advice is good.

I have tried a VERY quick rescue and the result is this

img01363lw_rework.jpg


I did the following:

1. Create a levels layer and adjusted curve to bring detail out of shadow areas. Applied mask and filled mask out, then painted it back in onn lower part of girls face (not very well but with more time you can get a better result).

2. Same for hat but tried to darken with curve (also tried to darken but effect was too "grey").

3. Added levels layer and adjusted midpoint.

4. This was not really required but I tried it anyway. Added "multiply" layer and used circular gradient mask using girl as centre. Painted in / out areas to try to add colour or darken shadows.

If you use layers you can always throw them away if you go too far. Hope this helps!
 
Did you shoot RAW or jpg ? if RAW you can reconvert the shot underexposing by a couple of stops. mask and copy the hopefully less blown hat area over to the original. Some practice and messing about (technical term) will enable you to blend it in so it looks more natural. If jpg, go back and take the shot again :)
 
Also had 10 minutes in photoshop and came up with this..:whistle2:


nz.jpg
 
Mate, that's quite impressive.

Not sure about the furry border though :D But the hat work for a 10 minute job impresses me :)
 
Marcel said:
Mate, that's quite impressive.

Not sure about the furry border though :D
Click to expand...



I also wondered about the border but thats a 2 minute job changing that.

Thanks Bod..:clap:
 
I dof my cap too! I am rubbish at that cloning lark especially when you have such a sharp edge to work up to. First Class!:first:
 
If you have to clone up to a sharp edge..... make a selection along that edge and you cant go over it when you are cloning! All clever stuff! ;)
 
My hat goes off to you busterboy (pun intended) :D

If highlights are completely blown, theres not a lot you can do about it, but I've had some success with bringing almost blown highlights back.

My first option is to blend 2 RAW files using layer masks (see my video tutorial) and a surprisingly effective method is in the shadow/highlights tool in PS.
I'd only ever used it to lift shadows but as the name suggests, it can control highlights too.
Just find the 'highlights' slider and increase it, remembering to pull the normally used shadows slider down to zero if your'e not trying to fix the shadows at the same time.
It can bring quite a lot of detail back in partially blown highlight areas...worth a try!
 
Thanks very much to all of you for your replies. I love the cloning touch especially! A lot of advice to digest...:confused:

:thumb:
 
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