Fudged my wife

Dinardy · Jul 19, 2013

How should I approach saving this picture and destroying blown out bushes? This unfortunately was shot without a fill so I had to crank up all sorts of mess in LR5. C&C is welcome on the photo itself.

This was taken at Mowich Lake, Wa - Mt Rainier National Park.

Help is highly appreciated! Thank you :mrgreen:

DSC_0892 by A A Jones, on Flickr

ceeboy14 · Jul 20, 2013

I had a similar issue with a pic I shot of my niece. I had to work around the pro they paid to make the shoot and part of the agreement was that I couldn't use fill flash, cause shadows, etc. I had late afternoon sun, not far from Seattle (Friday Harbor) which was unencumbered by clouds, fog, or mist.

After getting her pretty much as I wanted her to look, I used the quick select, refine edge to isolate her from the background, then inverted the selection and made a levels adjustment and two successive HSB adjustments to tone down the greens and to modify the sky slightly.

Pretty lady, by the way.

Here is the progression of where I started and where I ended. Oh, and I had to disappear a dog in the process.

Using the same method, although not taking the same amount of time I did with my niece, I redid your image but also included a crop.

Robin_Usagani · Jul 20, 2013

Just let the background be blown out. I rather have that than unnatural look like ceeboy's example.

Dinardy · Jul 20, 2013

ceeboy14 said:
I had a similar issue with a pic I shot of my niece. I had to work around the pro they paid to make the shoot and part of the agreement was that I couldn't use fill flash, cause shadows, etc. I had late afternoon sun, not far from Seattle (Friday Harbor) which was unencumbered by clouds, fog, or mist.

After getting her pretty much as I wanted her to look, I used the quick select, refine edge to isolate her from the background, then inverted the selection and made a levels adjustment and two successive HSB adjustments to tone down the greens and to modify the sky slightly.

Pretty lady, by the way.

View attachment 50475

Awesome! Thank you, I figured I had to do something along those lines... I guess I was just hoping there was a less involved work around haha

Thanks

I really scored with her.

Dinardy · Jul 20, 2013

Robin_Usagani said:
Just let the background be blown out. I rather have that than unnatural look like ceeboy's example.

This is probably what I'll end up doing, I was just curious if there was a magical tool or technique out there that I was not aware of.

Dinardy · Jul 20, 2013

ceeboy14 said:
I had a similar issue with a pic I shot of my niece. I had to work around the pro they paid to make the shoot and part of the agreement was that I couldn't use fill flash, cause shadows, etc. I had late afternoon sun, not far from Seattle (Friday Harbor) which was unencumbered by clouds, fog, or mist.

After getting her pretty much as I wanted her to look, I used the quick select, refine edge to isolate her from the background, then inverted the selection and made a levels adjustment and two successive HSB adjustments to tone down the greens and to modify the sky slightly.

Pretty lady, by the way.

Here is the progression of where I started and where I ended. Oh, and I had to disappear a dog in the process.

View attachment 50476 View attachment 50475

Wow thats great! did you just clone stamp buddy away?

ceeboy14 · Jul 20, 2013

No...I used the patch tool then did some minor cloning.

Dinardy · Jul 20, 2013

ceeboy14 said:
No...I used the patch tool then did some minor cloning.

Okay. Thank you for letting me pick your brain kind sir. I'm going to go give this a shot

ceeboy14 · Jul 20, 2013

As to the unnatural look, it is the best I could do given my shooting circumstance. Personally, I'd rather have had my tents, soft boxes, etc but no such luck. After persuing your webpage, I can understand why you like blown out backgrounds but I'd rather have my look than a blown out background any day. I was giving him an option to try and fix a shot which was not exposed correctly in the first place. I knew I was shooting about a stop out, but felt like I could get most of it back in the RAW editor. Each to his/her own, I guess.

Robin_Usagani · Jul 20, 2013

You could just fix the exposure, remove the dog and let the background be blown out? Why do you feel like everything has to be exposed correctly? It is not possible. Why do you want HDRish look? Is there something very significant with the background that you HAVE to show it? Sorry man.. You did a good job cleaning the background.. but you went too far with fixing the exposure.

ceeboy14 said:
As to the unnatural look, it is the best I could do given my shooting circumstance. Personally, I'd rather have had my tents, soft boxes, etc but no such luck. After persuing your webpage, I can understand why you like blown out backgrounds but I'd rather have my look than a blown out background any day. I was giving him an option to try and fix a shot which was not exposed correctly in the first place. I knew I was shooting about a stop out, but felt like I could get most of it back in the RAW editor. Each to his/her own, I guess.