How can I make this POP?

[kahulani]

I know this probably has major exposure problems, but I am trying to make this pop. Anyone wanna give it a shot or give me some advice in order to make this image better? THX!​

 

[mJs]

I would suggest playing with your contrast and midtone settings, increase the contrast, decrease the midtones...

 

[kahulani]

I would suggest playing with your contrast and midtone settings, increase the contrast, decrease the midtones...

Thank you that helped alot! Now why didn't I think of that! I've got a long ways to go here, so any other advice would be cool!

 

[mJs]

Little tweaking...

 

[Derrel]

It looks like you've got a big exposure problem in-camera, with the intense backlighting causing a lot of "pollution" of the image, due to intense veiling glare that the lens gave when shot into such a strong backlighting source. I think the best thing to try would be to create a new layer, and go to Apply Image, and hit "Screen" and set the opacity to 90 percent or so, and maybe repeat that step a time or two. That will lighten thingss up a bit. Images like this, that have been shot in extremely high-contrast backlighting cause veiling glare (a type of lens flare) AND over-tax the dynamic range of the sensor, are very difficult to make "pop!"

If you would have had a LOT of fill lighting in that room, you could have shot this with an in-camera exposure that would have been contained within your camera's 10-stop (roughly,depending on measuring methodology) Dynamic Range, but my guess is the original image is pretty so-so...

You could also try making two raw conversions, one for the shadows and the other optimized for highlights,and combining them.

 

[UUilliam]

What I did,

1. Duplicate layer, set to multiply, Duplicate again,
2. Change the opacity / fill of the layers to suit.
3. add a layer mask and mask out the people then invert the mask
4. add a levels adjustment to lighten the background, mask out the people
5. add contrast.
6. touch ups, I basically lowered my brush opacity and brushed the peoples faces back in so they weren't blacked out.

 

[IgsEMT]

You can also crop it vertical thus filling the frame with your subject and less distracting background

 

[snaggle]

Ok, here is what I did, I made 3 layers, the first one was the original pic, the second layer I had the contrast and brightness turned right down, then the third layer I used the original again but the opacity turnd down to 25%.

 

[SrBiscuit]

eeeek.
sry, uuilliam and snaggle...i don't think these edits work at all.
uuilliam, yours pops, but too far off the page.
snaggle, you;ve taken the levels so far that there are diffinitive pixels all over the image.

im thinking MJs edit is pretty good...gives it a nice bold contrasty look.

it;s a tough image to start with.

 

[Jeni]

I'm not sure if this is a gigantic improvement but I tried my hand at editing it.

Basically I used Lightroom, and used a lot of fill light, a little recovery, and upped the blacks and contrast.

It's similar to mJs's I just wanted to keep some of the shadows in the mans face in so it wasn't too blown out, and then I wanted to have the woman's face a little brighter.

 

[Hellrot]

In my opinion, you have so much vignetting it's distracting. Maybe a different crop would work. In this type of setting / background -- it's a more dreary scene, you'd expect a horror or sad scene. Pictures like this, I think, require happiness and color. I mean, they're celebrating life! But here's what I did with it.

 

[Weaving Wax]

I'd do an even tighter crop.

 

[Kylerood]

Reshoot =]

focus that flash bounce off the wall behind/to your right and youll get an evenly exposed image. looks like your flash missed the subjects completely... in a bad way.

This picture has a lot of good characteristics to it though, would be a lot better with a re shoot though!

Goodluck.

 

[robertwsimpson]

Adjusted curves for deeper blacks and more contrast in the bright areas
Cloned out spot on woman's stomach
Burned and Dodged wall for more interesting secondary subject
Skewed image to straighten window frame
Recrop for more interesting composition

Hope you like


(the thing that bothers me the most about the photo is that there is a sheet on the floor. And not the whole floor.... just part of it. It looks tacky.)

 

[poof]

This is a tough one. Here's what I came up with:

If this was for real, I'd also spend some time on the lighting anomalies near her right shoulder. I'd also remove whatever's in the window behind his back.