Extra Colour Patch in Photo ??

[bayhli]

Good morning,

I had hoped to edit this head shot for my daughter but to my disappointment it has extra patches of green amongst her hair in the photo.

http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/1618/nat15zq.th.jpg (http://img57.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nat15zq.jpg)

I have no idea what this is or how to edit it away in Elements. Can anyone help with this?

I'm really puzzled as to why this happened. The colour green is so bright, too much so to be noise or reflection, and even tho it's St. Patrick's she certainly does not have anything green in her hair. :) There is nothing green in the room where the photo was taken. If you look closely one area of green is under a curled tendril of hair, as if the colour is really on her head. Strange indeed.....

Using a Canon G5 camera but have never had anything like this added to my photos before. I have another of the same photo taken from a different angle and that green is there in that one as well??

I'd sure appreciate any advice as to why this could have happened and if it is possible to edit out in Elements; how would I go about that given the difficult area of hair it appears in. Thanks so much.

[Wendy]

Hi Pat ..

Oh ... I haven't a clue where that could have come from :confused: :confused:

... but I can help you sort it out. Create a new layer above your image, set the blend mode of the layer to colour. Now sample a colour from her hair and paint on the new layer where the green is ... the green should vanish :)

Let me know how you go on with it ... :)

Wendy

[bayhli]

Thanks so much Wendy... I'll give that a try & let you know how I make out. Thank you so, so much!

[bayhli]

Amazing !!! It is totally gone and only took a second.

I thought it would be like cloning and I would have to match the different colours of hair for every piece, but painted on my first hair colour selection and it just blended everything in a couple of easy strokes.

Looks like I need to read up on the layer modes, which I haven't done as yet.

Sure appreciate it Wendy... I'm going to try the new Dreamy filter on this photo - if I can figure out how that works! Thankfully they provide a manual.

Thanks again Wendy.

[Wendy]

Hi Pat ...

So glad that it worked OK ... its a handy little way of sorting out colours. It works well on blotchy skin tones to :)

Wendy

[Jodi Frye]

weird. Is that the only green in the image ?

[bayhli]

Hi Jodi,

I have this burning need to know the why's of everything so even tho Wendy helped me fix it up I went on to investigate the photo further.

The background is dark and when I brightened it up I found that the photo was not taken in the room I originally thought it was. What I found is that there are patio doors behind her, in which I can see a large reflection of my flash (taken at night), there is a hanging celing light just above and behind her. And lo and behold a large GREEN vase with a large plant beside it, on top of a cabinet, altho in height much below the top of her head in the photo.

So... I can only think that the combined light factors somehow bounced that green onto the top of her head. I did think it resembled plant leaf texture when I enlarged the areas but didn't think there was one nearby until I lightened up the photo. The tone of the green fits too.

Strange huh?

[Wendy]

Hi Pat ...

Well at least you have solved the mystery :)

Wendy

[Jodi Frye]

Yup, you are a regular sleuth ! Tho, there are still strange things that appear in images that cannot be explained away as dust orbs or reflections. Glad you got that one figured out tho....I was beginning to think perhaps the chemicals from the perm had a strange reaction to the sensor on you camera ;) ...please don't slap me if that is natural curl :)

[bayhli]

Yup and there goes my excuse for the Canon 20D that I'm burning up to buy!!

I'm really appreciative of photo elements, not to mention your gracious help Wendy, in that this would have been a photo I would have had to discard. Really points out the value of this great editing program !!

[bayhli]

Jodi :D :D

Natural curl all the way.... altho there is some highlighting chemical in it now that she's in her 30's. (she'd slap ME for showing the close-up of the darker roots!)

[kayser]

I'm glad you discovered the source of the green, that was really strange!

And we learned a new technique in the process...