Brightness

[Richard01 Profile]

Hi how can I fix someones face that came out to bright I had to use flash in a low light room.

Many thanks
Richard

[admin]

It's hard to tell without seeing the picture. However, if the person is too bright and the rest of the room is too dark, I'd use the Area Treatment tab. Make an area to cover the person then use a combination of the first three sliders to restore their appearance. You can then make a second area covering everything that's too dark and use the first three sliders in that section to brighten that part up.

Kind regards

Tony

[Richard Briggs Profile]

I had exactly this problem the other day. Picture of my wife in a yellow dress sitting in a dark pub. I even used bounce flash but I ended up with very bright face and dress. But, worse than that, some areas of the dress were completely blown out (white). As it happens I didn't use SPE but Photoshop Elements but I am sure the same could be done in SPE. I didn't use the 'Area Treatment' approach although this is what I often do. But not this time....

Adjusted Shadows to bring them up a little to reduce the overall difference between light and dark. Goes someway to reducing the impact of the overly bright parts.
Adjusted Highlights to reduce them and hopefully bring out some detail that's almost lost.
Adjusted overall Contrast to, once again, even out the shadows and highlights a little.

But after all this parts of the dress were still white because the detail was completely blown out. So what I did then was paint over these parts with a brush set to the colour of the dress but with reduced opacity. This just gave the blown out bits a subtle yellow shade. Didn't look as bad as the blown out white. Not sure how you do this is in SPE but I am sure you can (Area Treatment?).

Of course, if I'd shot in RAW this all would have been a lot more effective but I went for Auto in this case (no RAW on my Canon).

Richard

[Richard Briggs Profile]

Before and After

DEMO.jpg (327.39 KiB) Viewed 11394 times

[Richard01 Profile]

Thankyou for your help.
Richard