Help needed bad plz!

[RL.]

I had a shoot with a cute girl today and I took a lot of photos with the sunset in the background and they all came out like this!!!

Is there a way to fix this, and how can I? I have photoshop cs3 and lightroom but I can't seem to fix these photos!!! Help would be much appreciated because I did the majority of my shoot with the sunset as background like this....I messed up! lol

Basically the exposure and tint is off on the girl and I want to be "normal" not red... Shot with my 50d + 70-200 2.8 + 430exII

 

[Jarmo]

It's the flare caused by the sun. I don't think there is any way to avoid this except not to shoot at the direction of the sun.

 

[LaFoto]

If I had to try and rescue these two, the first thing I'd do is crop out as much white hot sky as possible, mostly so the brightest area where the sun seems to have been. Not quite so possible in 1, as that area is too close to your model, but sure do-able in 2 - where it would also eliminate the equally overexposed reflection of the sun on the water of the lake.

After having reduced the bright areas to a minimum, I'd set out to clone out the lens flare.

Then I'd have to start trying out this or that in order to increase contrast on the model herself - to later counterbalance the intense red on her by means of balancing the colours differently.

It's little use telling you what I'd do with my PS, as it is an ancient old version (6.0) and many things may well be called something else today.

I've "done" all this in my mind only just now (and haven't tested if and how it would really work), and thinking about it further, I'm not sure you can successfully rescue 1. There is hope for 2, though, I guess. I could test it for you!?!

 

[Blake.Oney]

The only way I could thing of to go with this is actually a lucky situation. These shots are actually kind like the RAW shots a lot of girl photographers are starting out with in my area to get a certain "style". I'm not fond of it, but your girl might be. Anyway, in ACR (lightroom will work exactly the same) I turned the temp. down. In this case a slight blue tint is better than burnt red, but it will be kind of helped in a minute. I turned the tint down to around -20. Recovery up around 25. From here you adjust the blacks and contrast until you're happy, and the same with clarity. To kill some of the tint I then turned the vibrance down.

It's quick and not perfect, but a lot of people around here (mostly girls) are into this right now.

 

[LaFoto]

OK, you say your photos are OK to edit, so I gave 2 a try (leaving the lens flare, as my cloning skills are poor...), giving it the crop I had visualised first, then working on background bushes and model (with the help of the lasso tool feathered at 20) separately with the levels (I could up the shadows from 0 to 40 and further darken the midtones from 1.00 to -.70).

Then I had to work on the colour balance. I shifted the cyan-red slider to -25, the magenta-green one to +10 and the yellow-blue one to +25 (always on the midtones).

After that, I increased overall contrast by 10. Then found her face too dark, lassoed that one again (feather still set to 20), upped the highlights on her face from 255 to 225... and yes, I think that was basically it.

Like I said: I refrained from cloning out the lens flare in the end, as the results were too poor.

But all in all I should say that if all your photos came out like this, you DID mess this one up...

So, here's my edit then:

ETA: Looking at my edit now, I feel that she's still very red in her face, though I thought I had changed it a lot when I tried to change it, but comparing this to Blakey.Oney's edit, I feel having a reddish tint with sunset light goes better than his very, very cool colour temps... But these are TOUGH ones to rescue!!!

 

[LCARSx32]

Yet another edit:

 

[Blake.Oney]

Yea, I don't like having either temp really. Well, maybe a little one way or the other is okay. That one just popped to mind because a lot of women around here are shooting into the sun and then desaturating and cooling the photo's down. I don't know why, but a lot of their female customers are going wild over it.

 

[LaFoto]

I called you "Blakey.Oney" and it is "Blake.Oney", I hope you don't mind.
And come to think of it, my edit still is way too warm all over, even though I did "cool down" the skin tones after I had worked the levels - which made all the red going on here even redder and redder, of course.

In general, though, I feel that there is little that can yet be done about these.
The shooting was a failure, to my mind...

 

[reznap]

Played with the photo a bit.