Can this image be saved?

[Harold_L]

I greatly overexposed the highlights in this photo of "The Children's Railroad" taken in Budapest. The face of the boy and his white shirt have eluded any of my attempts to save them using Picture Window Pro. Does anyone have any suggestions? Or suggestions on how to avoid such a problem next time? Image taken with Canon S500.

Thanks, Harold

[Dweezil]

You should be able to make some adjustments to shadows and highlights in PSCS. I don't know that it will make the picture 100% useable, but it will make it better.

[tim]

You're unlikely to be able to do much with that picture. It's usually impossible to fix overexposed images, underexposed images you can often do something with.

[Harold_L]

Thanks, Time and Dweezil. I suspect you are right, Tim. I have found a nice tutorial on using masks in Picture Window Pro, which I will apply to this image. After I learn the technique, I will repost the result, if there is any significant improvement over the original.

Harold

[Harold_L]

I was able to make a slight improvement after working very hard with masks and transformations using Picture Window Pro 3.5. For example, notice the shadows in the boys shirt in the new version that are not present in the original image.

Harold

[hauff]

Here's my feeble stab at it. I started with Harolds last edited picture.

http://www3.telus.net/public/g0a00489/Untitled-1.jpg

[Harold_L]

Better still, Bryan. How did you do it?

Harold

[LadyHawk]

I've always wanted to try the multiply feature in layers (Photoshop)... great for overexposures. It worked pretty well. Also used curves to darken the the blown out areas.

[Harold_L]

Hi, Karen. Far better than my original image. I do notice that the shadows I managed to bring out in the boy's shirt are missing. That might be a goal for further processing with Photoshop. One thing that I have found so far with Picture Window Pro is that the histogram display is not detailed enough. At least, I haven't been able to find out so far how to spread out and magnify the very upper end (brightest) part of the histogram, which is where all of the problem with this image lies.

Harold

[Radioham]

Here's my humble effort
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stephen.bates590/Childrens_Railroad_Budapest_May_2005_800px.jpg

[Harold_L]

Not so humble! Best of the lot so far with regard to the man standing in front of the engine. I was just thinking that I have the advantage of working with the original image, rather than the severely compressed images posted here. If anyone would like to play with the original image, I could try to send it privately. It is large (about 2 MB as I recall).

Harold

[hauff]

You could email it to me as well. It's become somewhat of a challenge to try and correct. hauff@telus.net

[LadyHawk]

Here's my humble effort
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stephen.bates590/Childrens_Railroad_Budapest_May_2005_800px.jpg

Good job, Radioham... can you tell us what you did and what program you used?

[PhotosGuy]

Print it SMALL, & next time shoot RAW if you can. ;-)

[Radioham]

[Good job, Radioham... can you tell us what you did and what program you used?
__________________
Karen ]

Hi Karen
I used Photoshop cs2 Image x apply image x blending multiply 100%
Adjustments x Brightness/contrast
------"------- x Shadow/Highlight
I am no expert I just like having a go,
Most of the time I have to ask my son about what the setting do, LOL
Hope this helps Steve

[Harold_L]

I am ready to declare that the group has gone as far as it can with this image. Radioman (Steve) has even processed my original image in PSCS, with about the same results as his version posted here. I declare him as the overall winner. And many thanks to all who have participated in this interesting (to me) exercise.

I post my latest result using Picture Window Pro, showing both the image and the mask used to apply transforms. Too much of my image seems to contain pixels of maximum brightness, which really contain no information other than white, I guess.

Harold

[LadyHawk]

[Good job, Radioham... can you tell us what you did and what program you used?
__________________
Karen ]

Hi Karen
I used Photoshop cs2 Image x apply image x blending multiply 100%
Adjustments x Brightness/contrast
------"------- x Shadow/Highlight
I am no expert I just like having a go,
Most of the time I have to ask my son about what the setting do, LOL
Hope this helps Steve

Steve - I know what you mean about getting help from the kids. :)
Isn't Shadow/Highlight one of the new features in CS2? I guess I should be using it. Thanks for sharing your magic... much appreciated.

[tim]

Shadow/Highlight was in CS1.

Can you all post your techniques for what you did? I'd love to learn how to do this, I have no idea how you recovered it.