Please help me fix this pic.

A bunch of my shots from this accident turned out like this. I assume because I was shooting into the sun. I tried messing with it but couldn't get rid of the hazy flare or whatever towards the top. HELP!

Here is an untouched copy. It is shot with Fine JPG.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO | PHOTOBUCKET ERROR IMAGE

Start shooting in raw..... It's difficult to fix exposure problems without a raw file. With raw, you can do miracles.

Oh, and you could mess with the levels/curves adjustment for this jpeg.. might help, but you may not recover all. I've made
my share of exposure mistakes... frustrating, huh?

By the way.. cool shot!

yeah, some from this shoot turned out but all from this angle had this problem. I keep putting off shooting RAW, i don't know why. Actually as I'm typing this I'm downloading the RAW plug-in for CS. I tried levels and few other things (can't figure curves out yet) and the lower half doesn't look too bad, just the top is all jacked up.

Thanks, i posted some of the better ones in the Urban board.

Steps taken:

1) First I just brought up levels and hit Auto. That did 95% of the work right there.
2) Then I added a small curves adjustment because I felt that levels left the image too dark, so I brighted it just a bit.
3) Then I bumped up saturation of yellow by +15 and red by +10.
4) Then I applied a little USM for "Local Contrast". I did that by applying USM at 15% with a 60 pixel radius.
5) Finally sharpened and saved.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

You know, I put off shooting Raw for a LONG time. I finally tried my first raw shots in October ... DUH... was all I could think. Everything looks better in raw... skin tones more natural, it's weird.... much better quality. I've been using Raw Shooters Essentials. Lots of info about it here on the forums. works great and very easy to use... I don't think I will ever go back to jpeg. I usually shoot Raw and low level jpeg.. I'm not sure why I think i need the jpeg to be there, but it feels like a safety net of some kind. Anyway,,,, give it a try, you'll wonder what you were waiting for.

Nice Edit dterry..,

I agree. At least RawShooter Essentials. It's free. If you happen to like it - you'll find that you'll really love RawShooter Premium. It costs a little (but to me it's very reasonable). I shoot just about everything in raw except for fast action sports.

Ok, I downloaded your pictures and it's a couple of megs. I can't reupload it because it says it's too big. How did you manage to upload such a big file ??


Ok, I just uploaded it as big as it would let me. Not big enough for you to save, but big enough for you to see hopefully. Check your PM. You can email me and I'll email the full size file.

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I dunno, all I know is that I just have it hosted on photobucket.

I had a play too, auto levels, add contrast, and perhaps play with the color ballance, like Terry did. It gets a lot better, but it'll never be perfect image quality. One idea to prevent this in future is using your hand to shade the lens, or moving to put the sun more to the side.

dwterry wrote:
Steps taken:

1) First I just brought up levels and hit Auto. That did 95% of the work right there.
2) Then I added a small curves adjustment because I felt that levels left the image too dark, so I brighted it just a bit.
3) Then I bumped up saturation of yellow by +15 and red by +10.
4) Then I applied a little USM for "Local Contrast". I did that by applying USM at 15% with a 60 pixel radius.
5) Finally sharpened and saved.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

The ones I tried ened up like this. Which is much better, but is there a good way of getting rid of the haze at the top.


Thanks for all the help so far.

duped original and changed the view mode from normal to multiply

duped the new layer from above and added a mask and used the gradient to only show the top third (hazy stuff) - duped this layer and again set it to multiply and reduced the opacity

saved - a couple of clicks and a couple of seconds

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Shooting RAW helps with exposure problems in tricky outdoor lighting situations when you don't really have time to dial in your exposure after metering and setting everything manually. But it's not going to get rid of the haze when you are shooting into the sun like was done here.

You can however do a good job of getting rid of the haze in Photoshop if you know what you are doing.

I notice that your equipment list indicates hoods with the lenses. I'm not familiar with those lenses or whatever hood comes with - however, for future reference, when shooting into the sun, it helps to hold one hand out in front and above the lens and adjust its position until you see the playback of the image on the screen regain its contrast. Usually, with a little care this can be done without having your hand in the image. A little precaution like that can avoid hours in post processing.

The problem arises from the fact that the front element of the lens was in the direct view of the sun. The forward scatter of the sun's rays appears in all parts of the image and weakens or washes out the shadow areas to the point where there is no contrast left. Easy to avoid if you take the trouble to notice the effect.