Can anyone help please!

[stan1336]

Tok this in the studio the other day but it is very flat. Can anyone have a fiddle with it in photoshop and tell me how to improve it please. Going off my head trying to solve the problem. I just cannot seem to make it POP!!!!

[vetkrazy]

Even tho you are asking for help, it would be best to turn on "Image Editing OK"

[stan1336]

Thanks but i do not know what you mean.

[vetkrazy]

Go to settings and profile/edit profile/additional information/image edit and repost permission/click on yes for permission to edit your photos.

[René Damkot]

Try an USM of 15%; radius 150; threshold 0.
Next time, use a flag to keep the light source out of the lens: you've got a massive amount of flare on the left...

[stan1336]

Thanks fella's I have now turned the allow edit on.

[DatsEvolution]

Ok, well I've played with it a bit and here is my version. It has 5 adjustment layers.

Levels, Curves, Colour Balance, Hue & Saturation and finally a sharpening layer.

[René Damkot]

A bit different:
Assigned sRGB profile.
Copied layer, and applied USM (luminosity blend). Masked off to affect only the left side.
Added grouped curves layer to get the left side darker (except for the faces)
Added curves layer to get the right brighter (luminosity blend).
Added curves layer to add contrast.

Flare isn't gone completely, but about as good as I could get in this Q&D.
Contrast looks more natural, but still high key IMO.

If you don't understand a word of the above: Download the layered PSD file here: Right click (http://www.moonglade.net/~rene/POTN/attachment_layered.psd) ;)

[vetkrazy]

Okay, here's my take on it.





157428

[rammy]

If you take a look at the histogram you can see that it is bunched to the right which is no bad thing if "exposing to the right" but if you look at the extreme right there is some clipping.

157582

Slightly over exposed with clipping is virtually impossible to recover from, even in RAW. DatsEvolution and René have done well. A combination of the two would be good?

[tim]

Rammy has it right. Auto levels does the job, else just fix the histogram, add contrast, and fix the white balance. Photo is overexposed.

[stan1336]

thanks for your efforts lads, it is really appreciated. I think i will go with dats evolutions stab.

[gcogger]

OK, here's my attempt.

Assigned sRGB first. Duplicated layer, applied Levels to get the left side looking similar to the (original) right then blended it in using a left to right, white to black gradient as a layer mask. Merged image. Used Levels on the whole image to up the black point and boost Green and Blue with the middle slider to tame the excessive red content. Applied a touch of high pass sharpening.

http://www.gcogger.dsl.pipex.com/stuff/edit.jpg