Can you help wsith this shot? PLEASE!

Darton · Nov 16, 2007

Sorry if this si postedin the wrong spot.

I took this shot of my wife and me on the day I proposed (about 2 minutes afterwards). My photography knowledge was zero at the time. As you can see the sky and most of us is blown way out. It dosen't help either that this was shot w/ a kodak 2.3mp point and shoot. Can anyone work there photoshop magic on it to maybe get a useable picture?? I'm not worried about making the sky look great, i'd just like to see us decently in the shot. I know someone out there can. So I guess i'm calling YOU out, do your thing and show us all what you got. Please!?!?!?!?!?!?

dkf10425 · Nov 18, 2007

I looked at your photo. Not much can be done. Not only is it blown out, but you have jpeg compression artifacts that are very obvious even at a small magnification of 200%. The quality loss from this can never be restored. Also any additional editing from this photo will further degrade quality because if you edit an already bad jpeg, then save it again as a jpeg, the quality worsens.

Darton · Nov 18, 2007

dkf10425 said:
I looked at your photo. Not much can be done. Not only is it blown out, but you have jpeg compression artifacts that are very obvious even at a small magnification of 200%. The quality loss from this can never be restored. Also any additional editing from this photo will further degrade quality because if you edit an already bad jpeg, then save it again as a jpeg, the quality worsens.

Thanks for trying. I didn't think much could be done, but you never know.

Alex_B · Nov 18, 2007

I had a quick go at it .. but not worth posting here. I am sure a true expert could do something with lots of twitching and applying tools selectively to different areas of the image. but i am not that good.

there is just not much detail left in the shade to work with ...

Darton · Nov 20, 2007

Alex_B said:
I had a quick go at it .. but not worth posting here. I am sure a true expert could do something with lots of twitching and applying tools selectively to different areas of the image. but i am not that good.

there is just not much detail left in the shade to work with ...

Thanks for trying. It would be kinda cool to have a good pic of this moment. But I will be a man about it and act like it dosen't bother me. :grumpy:

NikonLady52 · Nov 20, 2007

Seeing as all the assessments above are right, I played with this in CS2 to see if I could manage something salvageable for the moment. Ultimately if you could both put on the same clothes and revisit the spot, you could reenact the photo to get one with a better exposure. From what I see here , you exposed for the sky and scene inside the building and managed to blow out the sky as a result and leaving the two of you underexposed. You need to meter for a mid point , perhaps the stone wall that was brightly lit from the sky beyond may have helped. Anyway whatever you decide here is an artistic version of your photo which I think isn't exactly what you had in mind but definitely more do-able than the original. Hope you like it, as I added a sunset to replace the blown sky and warmed it up a bit .