EDIT DARK PHOTOS

rlight · Oct 17, 2010

Hi,

I took a bunch of digital photos in a museum yesterday, which did not allow flash photography and a lot of the photos are dark. The camera I was using is not a high end model, so I was limited in what I could do. Can you recommend a photo editing program that would improve my photos? Right now I have Magix Extreme and FotoStone on my computer.

rlight

Garbz · Oct 18, 2010

GIMP and Paint.NET are two free and very capable editors out there. But you can only do so much with a poor picture. Don't expect great results.

KmH · Oct 18, 2010

To expand a bit on what Garbz said - to a large degree it will depend on the image file format the photos were made as.

If they are JPEGs, there is little editing headroom and your results will likely be poor since JPEG is a final, ready-to-print format.

If they were made as RAW image data files there is significantly more editing headroom, however, underexposed photos have more noise and increasing the exposure just makes the noise more promenent. There is noise reduction software, but using it, by necessity reduces image detail.

Good Luck.

Post one of the photos and I'll see what I can do with it using Adobe Photoshop and ACR.

RauschPhotography · Oct 18, 2010

Could you post these pictures so we know what you're working with?

UUilliam · Oct 18, 2010

Power of RAW Processing

have a look at that to see how I recovered my photographs.
I am not sure if it will work on your though as I did use RAW format.

rlight · Oct 18, 2010

Thanks for all the info. I'm going to need some help on how to post my photos.

rlight

KmH · Oct 19, 2010

Here you go:

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...forum-functions-pictoral-guide-using-tpf.html

TheMagic · Jan 24, 2011

Dunno if you're still having trouble with this (probably not I guess), but I know 350pages has a decent auto-enhance photo editor for improving image contrast and brightness.

Hope that helps.

dnavarrojr · Jan 29, 2011

What software do you recommend for noise reduction? I've been using PhotoShop and it's hit and miss some times (and yes, I shoot RAW).

KmH · Jan 29, 2011

dnavarrojr said:
What software do you recommend for noise reduction? I've been using PhotoShop and it's hit and miss some times (and yes, I shoot RAW).

Which Photoshop do you use?

Photoshop Lightroom? 1, 2, or 3?
Photoshop/Creative Suite? Ps 1, Ps 2, Ps 3, Ps 4, Ps 5, Ps 6, Ps 7, CS, CS 2, CS 3, CS 4, or CS 5?

The most recent version of ACR (ACR 6) does pretty good noise reduction.

I also use Imagenomics - Noiseware Pro, and Topaz Labs' - DeNoise.

dnavarrojr · Jan 29, 2011

I have CS4... Hoping to get CS5 by March.

A few friends in my local Camera Club use Topaz... It's probably time for me to download the demo and take a look at it.

Garbz · Jan 29, 2011

Photoshop Lightroom 3.x has an excellent noise reduction algorithm built in. If that fails I typically break out Noise Ninja.

dnavarrojr · Jan 29, 2011

Alright Keith, TopazLabs owes you a commission check. I played with DeNoise and Details for an hour and love'd 'em, so I bought 'em. Almost bought ReMask, but I couldn't get the demo to work and I didn't have time to watch all the tutorials.

skieur · Jan 30, 2011

It depends on your shot and how dark it is. Working with jpegs, Viveza does the best job of selective brightening and contrast quickly. Noiseware Professional or Photoshop can then be used if necessary to selectively reduce noise.

skieur