Can this be fixed?

[marlinspike]

http://Davidson.smugmug.com/photos/61337380-M.jpg

This is why there is tape on the floor to mark a boundary. Everyone always wants to cheat forward and you just end up screwing over the people next to you. Whoever you are you cheated forward and messed up my shot I hate you (wasn't the guy next to me, he was shooting Nikon and this is white). So, any ideas on how to fix this?
Thanks,
Richard

[wxwax]

That's a lot of real estate. I'm sure someone, somewhere could fix it. But it doesn't look easy. Not sure what you could clone that would match.

[DavidTO]

Fixing the guy's shorts wouldn't be too hard, I don't think. Rebuilding the crowd looks tougher to me. I'll play with it some over the weekend.

[marlinspike]

I'm not too concerned about the crowd, more so about the shorts....David...as long as your playing around with it...you want to play around with the full res file and then e-mail it back to me when you're done :deal ?
I'm incompetent when it comes to photoshop other than things like color and contrast.

[DavidTO]

Well, I'm no retouching artist, but here's what I did in about 5 minutes.

I actually didn't do any retouching per se. I used LAB, adjustment layers (curves) and masks to play with the lightness and color. I did this with two adjustment layers, painting with transparency to ensure that it only affected the areas that I wanted affected. I lowered the lightness channel and steepened the A and B channels fairly symmetrically. I did a second layer to get the part closer to the lens even darker and more colorful.

My logic is that all the info is there for the shorts, it's just too bright and de-saturated because of the lens.

Anyway, I could do better, and I'm sure that there are others that could do better than me with the original.

[DavidTO]

Looking at it here, I can clearly see that I went too far with the colors, and that the white stripe needs to be brighter...there are tons of little things that could be done to improve it more, but you get the idea.

[marlinspike]

Ok, that gives me an idea of what I need to do to it, but what's LAB?
Thanks,
Richard

[DavidTO]

Ok, that gives me an idea of what I need to do to it, but what's LAB?
Thanks,
Richard


LAB is another color mode, an alternative to RGB and CMYK.

RGB = Red, Green, Blue, the 3 colors that describe that color space.

CMYK = Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black, the three colors that describe that color space, with some help from black to make the shadows work.

LAB = Lightness, A channel and B channel. Here's where it gets confusing. L is easy, as lightness is an easy concept. A is the axis from green to magenta. B is from blue to yellow.

It's a great mode to use for many things, and allows you to do things that you can't do in any other color space. It's confusing at first, but really intuitive once you grasp it. I cotton to it.

There's a fantastic reading group here (http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=18203). I highly suggest reading the book and following the discussion *if* that sort of thing interests you. It's powerful and fast, once you learn it. But if you just want to shoot and move on...well, it's up to you. Dgrinners are split into different camps on this one, and neither camp is wrong. LAB is powerful and fast, but so is RGB. And 90% of what you need to do you'll be able to get done with RGB. It may not be as easy, or it may be easier.

I'd be happy to talk you through the couple of steps that I took to get there with your M image, if you want to work on your O. And like I said before, there are plenty of people here with a lot more expertise in retouching than me.

[Andy]

but what's LAB?


WHAT a straight man! :lol3