Pics too bright

[Yanis12]

I need help with a Xmas pic. I took the family for our Christmas pic and the picture didn't turn out the way I wanted it. Outside on a bright sunny day, the kids faces and body are half too bright and washed out. Is there any way to try to adjust that without affecting the rest of the picture?? Any and all advice would be helpful. Thanks

[Bayla]

Hi Yanis & welcome to the forum.

There are various ways to go about this, but a good idea would be to post the picture to this forum so that we can see the exact problem. Many of us here use Pixentral (www.pixentral.com (http://www.pixentral.com)) to post our pictures...just go to the site to upload your photo, then triple click on the link below the photo (labelled Forums) then paste it into your message here.

Bayla

[Fox54Black]

Here's a previous thread that dealt with something similar:
http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8418&highlight=blown+highlights

[Yanis12]

Sorry about that... here is the link


http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1hBqMVOjsUIFH5swLeLzmbIepNVwMe0

[Tom K]

Hi Yanis;

Welcome to the forum.

You may be able to save the image by using the 'burn' tool set to a soft
brush at a low intensity say 20%, go slow on a copy (ctrl J ) of the original.
Wipe several times on the light areas - don't overdo it.

Good luck .. Tom :)

[Daviskw]

Hi there

Harsh light is always hard to deal with. If you lighten the shadows you get color shifts and noise. Darkening the highlights often give you the same problems.

I used three levels layers... one for overall contrast…..one to adjust the highlights and the other for the shadows.

I could have used the burn and dodge tools but they often introduce color shifts.

I also used a hue/saturation layer to adjust the overall color.

There are two ways to use a levels adjustment layer for the purpose of adjusting luminance.

The first is to open a levels adjustment layer and move the sliders looking at a particular area of your picture... say the dark side of a face. Usually you will want to use the center slider. If you need contrast try moving the black to the right and or the white to the left.

When that area looks OK then hit enter... even if the rest of the picture is too bright or dark.

Then click on the attached mask and fill it with black... this hides the adjustment you just made. Then change the foreground color to white and reduce the opacity of a soft brush to say 30 percent. Click on your attached mask first then paint on your picture where you want the effect. With a low opacity brush you can slowly build up the bright or darkening.

The second way is the make a selection of a representative area in your picture you want to lighten or darken. Feather it about 8 pixels.

Now open a levels adjustment layer with your selection active… the marching ants... then adjust the sliders watching the area you selected. When it looks good click OK.

Now take your white brush with low opacity and paint on your picture where needed.

If you have color shifts... try changing the blend mode of the levels layers to luminosity.

Butch

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1l25xYklmdVObMjhlLIZcFK5uae60_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1l25xYklmdVObMjhlLIZcFK5uae60)

[karen donnybrook]

Yanis,

Welcome to the forum. What a beautiful of your family and hasn't Butch done wonders with it?

Karen :)

[Yanis12]

Thanks for advice on this pic. I'm still new to some areas of editing. It's great to be able to bounce off others and learn something new.... Thanks guys