Help!
HiYa POTN Folks,
I need help rescuing the content of an 'old' b&w 120 negative. It is aproximately 45 years old, shot with a crappy camera, and badly exposed/developed. On the upside the content is a super cute image of my girlfriend at age 3 holding her newborn sister on her lap. The downside is the two of them are sitting on a couch in front of a bank of extremely over-exposed windows and they girls themselves (being backlit) are in shadow and fairly underexposed.
I have scanned the 'beejesus' out of the neg using my Epson 4870 PHOTO using a plethora of settings and even fired up Vuescan for some multisample scans (to no appreciable benefit). I have 'photoshop-ed' the image to the absolute best of my ability (not inconsiderable in photo-tweaking). It's not to bad and my girlfriend is pretty dang happy with what I've pulled out of the image compared to the contact print she had previously.
What 'bugs' me is that using extreme movements in Curves I can get narrow strips across where the girls are sitting in shadow that are fairly detailed (with blown highlights and shadows of course) but I can't find a combination of settings anywhere in PS that 'Pop' all across the girls in the image.
I wonder if HDR software might offer me some hopes. (I've never used it before.)
Is there anything else I don't know of to try?
Help?
Richard
is the place where the experts hang out, so you should ask there as well.
