Photoshop fix for this building?

crystal_lynn · Mar 16, 2008

I love the colors, but I think the concrete in the front is two bright. Can this be fixed? I tried a few things with my limited knowledge and checked the PS book I have, but nothing worked without messing with the colors.

Ajay · Mar 16, 2008

You're going to have a hard time getting it too look any different because its completely blown. I don't think there is any detail there to bring out. Sorry.

Yahoozy · Mar 16, 2008

yah it really doesnt seem fixable after my attempts
sorry >.< it happens
maybe you could cut out the ground and overlay it on another piece of concrete?

Atropine · Mar 17, 2008

Yep, the ground is entirely burned out. You could eventually use the ground from another photo and delicately blend in some of it, but that would require some pp of course.

crystal_lynn · Mar 17, 2008

Aww poopy, I was hoping there was some magical technique in PS to help me.

Oh well, I'll just have to go back to Mexico and try again. What a shame...LOL

Tiberius47 · Mar 17, 2008

I had a go at it. Given that the concrete has been blown out completely and there is no detail, I recreated it in photoshop by creating a new layer with a bit of noise. I then created a new alpha channel in the same way and used the lighting effects to give the new layer with a bit of texture.

Then I distorted it so the perspective matched the perspective of the ground, and used a layer mask to keep the texture confined to where the concrete was blown out.

Not the most realistic, but bear in mind this was a very quick job. Playing around with blend modes might give a better result.

grafiks · Mar 17, 2008

Next time you are shooting something like this with bright sunlight and shadows, make note of the meter for the brightest areas and darkest areas. Then manually set your camera for the brightest, darkest and in between exposures and overlay them into a high-def image in Photoshop (assuming you have Photoshop). It will be worth it.

crystal_lynn · Mar 17, 2008

grafiks said:
Next time you are shooting something like this with bright sunlight and shadows, make note of the meter for the brightest areas and darkest areas. Then manually set your camera for the brightest, darkest and in between exposures and overlay them into a high-def image in Photoshop (assuming you have Photoshop). It will be worth it.

This photo was taken with a very cheap p&s. Before I had my 40d, but thanks for the tip.

rfulmer · Mar 24, 2008

If you have this image saved as a CR2 DNG, but if you do open it in camera raw and make two copies of the image. Move the sliders around to get the image looking the way you would like it. Then if you have CS2 take the other image and play around with the exposure in order to get the floor to produce some info. Then open them up into photoshop and put the two images in different layers with the blown out floor being the first or top layer. Then mask out the blown out floor, which will reveal the layer below containing the under exposed image, giving you the floor back on the top layer. Lightroom is another program that works great for these types of image problems and you don’t have to have them saved as CR2 or DNG you can open up a JPG or Tiff as well. Both programs work better with CR2 and DNG files. You might want to check that out.

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