Desperately need help with a photo of my dying mother

GroovyGeek wrote in post #18158071
Genuine Fractals before or after some type of noise cleanup, e.g. with the now free Nik filters? Genuine Fractals may be called something else by now, I have not used it in a long time.

Still called the same. On1 Resize uses it, which is part of On1 Photo 10.

OK, so after talking with the photographer more, she seems unsure as to why she had issues with the post processing. She sent me the images without the replaced sky and they are much, much better, but not perfect. The photos without her fake sky seem very bleached to me, like she tried to brighten the people but bleached out the sky and water in the process.

I do believe she will send me the RAW files (she did shoot RAW) but I do not know how to edit them. How would I go about getting them edited to look great? Can I just email them to a pro photographer and ask them how much they would charge me for just editing? What would something like that cost to edit 10-12 pictures?

The photographer offered me a full refund but I didn't take it. I am so grateful that she captured these photos of my family, even if it is costing me extra work. I also feel bad because she traveled over an hour and waived the travel fee and gave me a discount because of my mom's situation, she is a cousin of a very close friend, and she was about 8 months pregnant and getting bitten by mosquitoes out there at dusk. In other words, she did the work. Now I just want the photos in the best condition I can get them.

I think at this point my options are to either take the photos and have a photographer add a fake sky into the background to give them some color, or ask her for the RAW files and have them completely re-edited. Any thoughts?

Here is one of the photos that looks bleached out, but is less grainy than when she added the sky into the background.

I really appreciate all of your advice. I will not have the opportunity for a redo for these, so these photos are so priceless to me.

I would also like to say a very huge thank you to George Cottay, who emailed me from this board and fixed the first picture I posted. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Knowing the members of this board as I do (11.5 years) I am sure that if you make the Raw files available on a sharing cloud site like Dropbox and post the URL, you will be inundated with volunteers rendering them (each one according to his own taste/ability) and putting high resolution versions back onto that site.

tzalman wrote in post #18161887
Knowing the members of this board as I do (11.5 years) I am sure that if you make the Raw files available on a sharing cloud site like Dropbox and post the URL, you will be inundated with volunteers rendering them (each one according to his own taste/ability) and putting high resolution versions back onto that site.

^^^^THIS. I'll be glad to work on them for you.

Thank you so much, that would be amazing, I am so grateful! The photographer is out of town for the weekend but said that she will email me the RAW files on Monday and I will put them on Dropbox. You all are awesome.

For what it's worth, my mother was a teacher for 42 years and recently had a small library named after her. She was passionate about teaching children to read, and has spent her life doing all she can to help as many kids as possible. She is a very positive person, and the most generous, giving person I've ever known, and she believes that all that you give will be given back to you and more. Since her diagnosis I certainly believe that, and your help is just another example. Thank you all.

I'd be happy to assist you as well, no fee's needed.

That is indeed great news as there will be a plethora of folks offering to help out.
Please...I beg of you, do not offer compensation for our work for it would be our pleasure to do this for your mother.

chauncey wrote in post #18161991
That is indeed great news as there will be a plethora of folks offering to help out.
Please...I beg of you, do not offer compensation for our work for it would be our pleasure to do this for your mother.

Indeed.

It is normal that the sky would be very bright if she did not add more light to the faces such as with a strobe.

Cameras can only capture a limited number of stops of brightness. Getting faces light enough and sky dark enough on the beach during the day needs help.

With the RAW files, I'm pretty confident you will have good results. If you want a blue sky, it will probably need to be added.

If I may have a differing opinion, the last image seems to me to have captured everything that you value in your mother, a lovely lady with a beautiful child treasuring that moment in her life. While the picture is high-key, it doesn't look bleached out to me (but I do have my monitor brightness set low). I feel that adding a different sky is not needed. The background is not quite blown out - I see some shading quite high up on the right hand side and the horizon.

FWIW, I quite like the image as is, it has a nice dreamy quality to me, however, not having known your mother, it is of course, subjective, and may not be representative of your vision of your mother. Assuming little detail is lost in the printing, and printed at a slightly smaller size, i.e., 18 x 20 or something like that,this would be a picture I'd love to hang on the wall.

Regards,
Chris.

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I, also, am a fan of plain white (or whitish) skies, and really like the image as it is.

In my personal opinion, in many cases, blue skies are not as attractive as a rather plain whitish sky would be.

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I'm sorry about your mother's illness. I will join this thread and offer my meager talents to try to get you an image you like if you get the RAW file out there.

I'll be also glad to help if you make the RAW files available.

Count me in - I'll give it my best.

Regards,
GEWB

Thank you everyone for your offers to help, it really means so much to me!

If what I get out of all of this is a picture like that last one of my mother, I will be more than happy. My concern is more with the quality of the picture once she edited it (brightened the people), they seem very grainy.

Here is the link to 11 of the RAW files. If these can be made better, I will be thrilled, and if not, I have these pictures of my family, and I will be forever grateful.

https://www.dropbox.co​m …2Apyq3BwOeHdHjR​sHrUa?dl=0