Need Help With My Wedding Picture!

[michille_baker]

Hello everyone,

Its been a while since I've posted on these threads before so hopefully I do this right.

I just reciently got married and my uncle-in-law, who I feel is a great photographer, took our pictures, but the day of our wedding he was having a lot of problems with his flash going off when taking are pics:(.

Would someone be so kind as to try to help me edit this photo and maybe explain a little on how you did it. I have CS2 for a photo editer so I am hoping brighten these pictures back up. Also he did not shoot them in raw atleast I think because all he gave me was the JPG's. He also said I can do what ever i want with them. Let me know if you need me to send you the larger picture.

Thanks in adavance
http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff174/michille_baker/IMG_4554.jpg

[Meaty0]

The problem with the photo is that when he turned the camera around into portrait orientation, the flash was sideways and cast a very nasty shadow to the (camera) right. That's going to be very hard to remove convincingly.

The pose is a bit stiff (sorry!) and you can't fix that without a reshoot.

[seaside]

Hi Michille, this is a tough one. I took about 10 minutes and made some edits just to give you an idea of what might be accomplished. The shadow to your right would require some work and I still don't know if it would look good after editing.

Just a quick edit.........

Chris

[Meaty0]

Here ya go....

I cropped and straightened the image. Fixed the Levels. Increased the contrast using layers in "Soft Light" mode. Cloned out the bottom of the cross. Added a hue saturation layer and increased the saturation selectively on flowers. Added a vignette using the Lens Correction Filter. I also added a "soft focus" action to the lower portion of the dress only. Given more time and a bigger image, I would probably remove the unintentional "suntan" I gave you...if you wanted to that is!

http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/1917/weddingfixwq7.jpg

[seaside]

Mmmm! I'll have to figure out why the image won't upload.

Chris

[seaside]

Hope this works...........

[egraham]

How's this? I separated the bride from the background, then removed any distracting items (Shadows, that wooden thing above your head etc.). Then I adjusted some levels for both you and the background, put a gaussian blur on the background, merged them together again, straightened, cropped and vignetted. I'm still learning on CS3, so I figured This would be a good "project" if you will to help me learn.

[RandyMN]

How's this? I separated the bride from the background, then removed any distracting items (Shadows, that wooden thing above your head etc.). Then I adjusted some levels for both you and the background, put a gaussian blur on the background, merged them together again, straightened, cropped and vignetted. I'm still learning on CS3, so I figured This would be a good "project" if you will to help me learn.


You did good with removing the shadows and my computer is from work right now so it's not balanced for color, but IMHO something you did made the skin tones look awful.

Too pale...

[egraham]

Yeah, I don't know what happened eaither, It looked better before I posted it. I'm still trying to figure this out so that the colors match before and after I post it... don't know what I'm doing wrong.. I don't have much time to fix it now, but maybe later I'll re-visit it to play with it some more. It was a tough picture to begin with though... I must admit that.

[RandyMN]

Yeah, I don't know what happened eaither, It looked better before I posted it. I'm still trying to figure this out so that the colors match before and after I post it... don't know what I'm doing wrong.. I don't have much time to fix it now, but maybe later I'll re-visit it to play with it some more. It was a tough picture to begin with though... I must admit that.

You certainly said that right as it was and apparently still is a tough one to work with.

[michillebaker]

Meaty0: I was wandering why alot of my pics came out with a shadow on them. Now I know. It's a bumber that this happened to my wedding pictures. Don't know how much I really enjoy your version, but thanks for trying.

Seaside: I like how this picture looks if only I didn't have the distracted shadow in the background, but I could do what egraham did on the photo he edited and remove the shadow.

Egraham: How did you do that picture, could you shed someknowledge my way and maybe I may be able to that.

Thanks for everyones help.

Michille

[Siphanh]

Looks like egraham copy & paste 1/2" of the background on the left side to the right. In layers, so you can edit out the part you don't need. Also, touch up with the blur tool.

[Flo]

Erik did a fabulous job of separating the bride from the BG shadows! A slight level and some tint and contrast?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v299/emmaloudawg/Wedding.jpg

[egraham]

Looks like egraham copy & paste 1/2" of the background on the left side to the right. In layers, so you can edit out the part you don't need. Also, touch up with the blur tool.

The only thing I copied and pasted was the shelf thing on the BG with the flowers on it. I tried to save the original shelf (the side with the shadows, but too much detail was lost and it just looked weird.

But yeah, I basically started with separating the bride with the background, and put them on their own separate layers so I could work on the backround without affecting the bride, and vice versa. I cloned the distracting stuff out, then like mentioned above copied and pasted the shelf. Bumped up contrast, adjusted some levels and curves, then applied a gaussian blur to the background. For the bride, I USM'd a little bit and tried to brighten her up, but I guess I brightened a little too much.

[BeckyMax]

Erik, how do you separate the bride from the background?

[michillebaker]

You guys have been so helfull on these boards. It looks like I will have a long road ahead of me with fixing some of my wedding pics. Luckly though after viewing them again there were only a few that had that horrible anoying shadow in the pics. I will try to post a pic of my final work when I'm complete.

Thanks again

michille

[egraham]

Erik, how do you separate the bride from the background?

I used Polygonal Lasso, and traced around her, then put it on a new transparent layer.