Can I Use Burn Tool for an Overexposed Face?

[Jeff.B]

I am new to digital photography. I just bought a Fuji Finepix E550 and it has taken some marvelous photos thus far. I also have found it pretty easy to use. I also just bought Photoshop Elements 3.0.

I have found that flash photos taken within a few feet can make skintones too bright, even with the flash reduced (non-flash photos have approached spectacularly good!). One photo taken with flash of me and my wife left my skin tone in fine shape but part of her's washed out. I would have assumed that I could use the burn tool in Photoshop to fill in her face so that it isn't bright white. The burn tool seems to only fill in gray, not color. Is Photoshop capable of burning in something other than a gray tone?

Thanks,
Jeff

[MikeH]

Jeff,

A quick but effective fix for this is to use a number of copy layers.

:arrow: Create a copy of the Background layer (right click and hold on the Background layer and drag it to the "Create New Layer" icon above the layers palette).

:arrow: Go to the layer blend mode menu (this is located under the Layer tab - click on the down arrow)

:arrow: Select "Multiply" from the menu.

:arrow: Repeat this until the photo no longer looks overexposed.

:arrow: If adding another layer takes the adjustment too far then lower the opacity on the last layer that you added.

I have used this successfully a number of times now...

Mike

[Jeff.B]

As my facial tone is fine, I only need to deal with her's. We are side by side with a small table between us. I only want her facial tone to be changed, not mine. Will the above solution work in this way?

Thanks,
Jeff

[MikeH]

Jeff,

This works on the whole photo, so it may not give you the desire effect. But it's really very quick to apply (just a couple of clicks), so you could try it with a couple of copy layers to see what happens.

You mentioned "Photoshop" are you using Elements or a version of the full product?

If you want more control or to be more selective then try the following:

Go to Layer > New > Layer. When the "New Layer" window appears, change the mode to Overlay and tick the box to fill with 50% grey.

Set your Foreground colour to black (Press D). Choose a soft brush and lower the opacity and paint where you want to burn.

It help if you upload the picture so we can see it - you can use www.pixentral.com (it's free) and post the url here.

Mike

[Jeff.B]

Well, here is the URL for that site: http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?pic=1pQTmwzeC7VNGNbihddpF5WqK1TkaV0

The image hosted on that site is much worse than the file I uploaded to it. I'm not sure why it is so much worse. The original file is about 700KB.

Anyway, as I mention in the original post, I have Elements. I do NOT want her face to be filled with gray. Rather, I want to have flesh tones, but it seems that the area might have so much white (or be so overexposed), that there isn't any information there to darken. Can I do this?

Jeff

[MikeH]

Jeff,

Basically I can't see a way of doing it. I don't think there is much that can be done with this photo (well as it appears uploaded) :(

Mike

[Wendy]

Jeff ...

Try this variation on Mike's method ..... get the lasso tool and make a selection around her face (you don't need to be too careful with the selection) Then Select>Feather ... try around 20 but you may need to experiment.

Now do Edit>Copy then Edit>Paste and go to the layers palette and change the blend mode to multiply.

Wendy

[Jeff.B]

The photo is not nearly as bad as it appears uploaded on my computer. The original file on my computer has my face looking normal and the skin of my wife looking too white and in parts, completely white.

I'm surprised that there isn't a burn-in available aside from gray and black.

Jeff

[Jeff.B]

I'll see where your suggestion gets me. Why not? It gives me an opportunity to learn the program.

Thanks,
Jeff

[MikeH]

Jeff,

Email the picture to me...

Mike

[Wendy]

Jeff,

I played about with your image and here is what I did:

Duplicate the whole layer and changed the mode to multiply then reduced the opacity to 50%
Used the lasso method (as I previously described) on her face and dress, mode to multiply then reduced the opacity of the layer to 40%
Used the lasso method etc ... just on her face, mode to multiply then reduced the opacity to 20%.

There isn't a lot of detail in there so this was the best I could come up with:


http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?pic=1NqlNcadBDGEcdqP134O28SopbF0

Wendy

[MikeH]

Wendy,

That's about where I got to, yours is probably a bit better though. I think the face detail is burnt out too much.

Mike

[Wendy]

Mike,

There is very little detail in the face ... and its hard to do anymore with it.

Wendy

[TonyW]

Elements can do a lot but once you have burned in pixels they can't be fixed. You can fix it with the camera though. The Fuji E550 has a lot of capability and with a little experiment you can avoid the problems you're having quite easily. Look at the histogram in the camera after you've taken the shot and you'll see straight away if you've got a problem. Aim for a histogram without clipped highlights (too many pixels at the right hand end of the histogram). You can fix overexposure like this when using flash by shooting in manual mode at a smaller aperture. Putting a paper tissue over the flash (making sure you don't cover the sensor) will also help. It's a lot easier to fix an underexposed picture in Elements than to fix an overexposed one.

You have a great camera but to get the best shots under all conditions you need to use all it's capabilities (not just point and shoot on auto!). The beauty of digital cameras is that it costs nothing to experiment, you see what you've got instantly, and you can just delete the experiments that didn't work.

[Jodi Frye]

Something like this can/could be fixed with time and effort. Treat it as tho it were a b&W and colorize it...of course there is always tweaking involved...but it can be done..if I have some time next week I'll take a shot at it.

[gmcttr]

I'm surprised that there isn't a burn-in available aside from gray and black.

Jeff

Jeff, the dodge/burn tool does work on colors. The effect of "gray and black" is due to burning-in white (the colors in her face are blown out to white). Try it over areas with color just to experiment.