January 23, 2010

Overexposed photo of young boy with Santa

EXIF Data:
Fuji Finepix S1000fd
focal length: 14.7mm
f/3.2
1.60 sec
ISO 400
AWB
Brightness Value 5.00
Flash fired

The quality of the image was inadvertently set to a low setting (less than 1M) and the Brightness Value was inadvertently set very high.

The low quality setting along with the high brightness value and the flash firing managed to "blow out" most of the detail of the people in the shot. All of the areas of complete white is missing pixel data.

There is no real way to "fix" this, other than trying to find a way to "fill in" the missing areas. I was fortunate to have another image of this young man that I could try to work with to repair the image somewhat.

1. Duplicate image.

2. Set the "Blend Mode" of the duplicate image to "Multiply".

3. Duplicate the image 3 more times. This seemed to bring back some of the image contrast and detail, but, of course, would not bring back the missing pixel data.

4. I merged all the layers down into one, then duplicated that image.

5. I located an image of the little man that I thought would work with this (the head position was somewhat similar). I adjusted the brightness/contrast and color of this image using Curves and Levels to get a result that would fit in with the image I am working on.

6. Using the Lasso Tool, I drew a lasso around the entire head and neck of the second image, duplicated this selection, and dragged it onto the first image.

7. I resized and repositioned the head selection until I got it to a position and size that I was satisfied with, then put a mask on this layer and "painted" out the parts of the selection I didn't need. After doing this, I could see the head from the underlying image, so I had to adjust the underlying image.

8. Using the Clone Stamp Tool, I cloned out the edges of the underlying image that were showing up around the edges of the top image so that the edges of the top image were clean and clear.

9. Zooming out and looking at the image, I knew that I wanted the head to blend in more with the original image, so I went to the bottom image and using the Lasso Tool, drew a lasso around the head and neck of the little boy. I duplicated this image and dragged the duplicated layer so that it was above the other head layer. I make sure the duplicate that I just copied is in a position that somewhat matches the position of the head copied from the other image.

10. I now start working on blending the two heads together using a combination of Cloning and the Gradient Tool to get a smooth blend.
11. Once I am satisfied with the head, I make some small adjustments to the shirt and neck on the little boy to blend them.

12. Next, I work on the image of the dad in the foreground and try to "fill in" some areas on the neck and back of the head using the Clone Tool and the Brush Tool.

13. I do the same with Santa, just concentrating on getting a little more area filled in on his face.
14. I zoom in and check on the areas that I've worked on to make sure that I haven't missed anything and decide that I am satisfied with the final image. I replaced just enough pixel data in the areas that I needed to to try to "rescue" the image.

15. I cropped the image using the Crop Tool.

16. I put a border around the image by clicking on the "fx" icon at the bottom of the layers palette, and chose "Stroke" using white as my border color, an inside stroke set at 20 pixels.

17. Using the Rectangular Marquee Tool I made a marquee around the edge of the image just at the inside edge of the border and went to Edit->Stroke and chose 5 pixels. This put a small black "key-line" inside the border edge.

18. Save file as a .psd in case you need to work on it again.

19. Flatten image (File->Layer->Flatten Image), and save as .jpg.