Weird Brown Patches On Face

I have no idea what caused these weird brown patches on the face of this bride - she did not have any kind of discoloration to her face, nor was it dirt. Any ideas? (Not sure if this image size will show the problem)

can't see anything - can you load or link to flikr or other a much larger file?

camera?
lens?
aperture?
shutter speed?
taken in raw?

I'm guessing it's dappled light coming through the leaves.

No it wasn't dappled sunlight, I made sure she had no light on her face. I will try to load the original file.

camera: Canon 1DX
Lens: Canon 70-200 2.8IS
aperature:2.8
Shutter speed: 1/1250
ISO: 200
RAW

I can't tell but am reminded of what convinced me to give up on JPG and shoot RAW. Muddy looking areas of underexposure on faces, especially under the chin when shooting in concert lighting. RAW seemed to extend my dynamic range and eliminated what was a constant issue. This may have nothing to do with your issue, but just wanted to throw it out there for consideration. i don't even know if you shot RAW or JPG, hopefully RAW.

Michelle,

At my last wedding, I was taking some hair / makeup shots, and one of the pictures that I really liked, and decided to start trying to edit / process, had the shadow side of her neck darker than I wanted and as I began to do what I wanted to do to the picture in LR / PS, that shadow area got worse and worse and I ended up tossing the picture to my dismay; I could have completely rebuilt that area in PS but I decided that it was not worth it.

I cannot see the area that you are talking about because the file is too small - but my guess is that it is on the shadow side of her face. With the backlighting in the picture, my guess is that section you are seeing is 3/4/5 stops underexposed and for whatever reason you just can't recover it.

An off camera flash that you could have PS out of the picture would likely have saved the picture - this is of course assuming you don't have hardware issues; I just did a beach wedding and had 3 600EX-rts on a stand that I PS out of more than a few pictures.

Ok I created a dropbox folder with this image in it (there is also one other image in there with a whole nother issue I'm having - green tint in my shadows when I underexpose; going to create a new thread for that but if anyone wants to comment on that please feel free, lol!) Here is the link to the folder (images are SOOC RAW):https://www.dropbox.co​m …155m6pw/MBP_220​5.CR2?dl=0

The patches on the face are from pushing the raw file 2 stops to get close to a proper exposure. This is then amplified by two things.
Compression into jpeg.
Nothing but green in the image with out any warm or neutral light being reflected.

So. again, my biggest problem is under-exposing. Obviously I'v got to work on that. Thank you!

Michelle Brooks Photography wrote in post #17607463
So. again, my biggest problem is under-exposing. Obviously I'v got to work on that. Thank you!

Michelle,


I think the file is saveable for sure.

I little bit of the brush tool in PS to sample her better skin tones to paint the lower neck area, on his neck as well, a little bit on clone stamp tool to touch up the creases in the dress (and Liquify to do the same), maybe fix the grass areas in the front of the picture, in LR a few radial filters and graduated filters to equalize exposures with respect to how you want it to look and you have a useful picture that doesn't have to be tossed.

If you were take the picture again, the decision has to be are the colors in the sky worth trying to capture? - if so then you are going to need fill flash off camera. From you raw images, your 1Dx basically 'almost' washed out the sky detail and there is almost nothing really that can be recovered so it is kind of a loss anyways. So, if that is the case, then next time spot meter the brightest spot of her dress and peg that as far right on the meter so you are just getting blinking highlights on her dress (the sky would then be gone for sure) - this would have brought up the shadow side of her face enough to have 'saved it' or captured more information.

Even with the above said, I think your 'best average' exposure actually works because a tiny bit of sky detail is still there and only the shadow side of her face needs a tiny bit of brush tool in PS to save the image which is very easy in PS and a win in my view.

Personally, now that I have been playing with the 5DSR this past week, I see where the 5DSR with 3x the pixels of the 1DX would have really shined in this exact situation as when you zoom in to their faces and her dress it is the loss of detail, to me, that would be the most useful thing to have - not more DR or increased exposure.

I have included my quick LR / PS edit to show what I would do to optimize your photo - if you have an issue I will remove it immediately.

This is a saveable picture in my opinion.

Paul

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/uMTS​Sf

Not trying to be harsh but Just the way he is standing, his posture, his facial expression ( I know going for that no smile look but he did not nail it on this photo), the wrinkles in his pants and the way his coat is sitting right now, probably could have been unbuttoned especially with a vest on, and the use of no flash or soft light, I would toss it. Why waste the time trying to fix it. They are not going to like it anyway.

^^^

That is some of the most egregious grain I've ever seen!

Amadauss wrote in post #17607581
Not trying to be harsh but Just the way he is standing, his posture, his facial expression ( I know going for that no smile look but he did not nail it on this photo), the wrinkles in his pants and the way his coat is sitting right now, probably could have been unbuttoned especially with a vest on, and the use of no flash or soft light, I would toss it. Why waste the time trying to fix it. They are not going to like it anyway.

I have to agree. Never mind the dark patches on the face, his pose kills this shot above everything else. To be frank it emphasises the fact that his suit fits him badly and he looks a mess, look at his tie too. His semi curled up hands also lend me to think this is a guy who is very uncomfortable in a suit. You can fix the exposure to a degree but you can't fix him.

looks like it was shot wide too.... LR can fix that.