Trying to fix a photo

[Christian]

My family loves this photo of my nice playing with her hair dryer during our Christmas gathering. Unfortunately the background came out way to destracting and I'm trying to clean it up. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Here is the original:
http://cnelsen.smugmug.com/photos/13977107-M.jpg

I made some attempts to desaturate the background and crop it in to get ride of some of the distractions. How am I doing? Is there more I can do?
http://cnelsen.smugmug.com/photos/16630970-M.jpg
Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

Christian

[cletus]

I think you're on the right track. In addition to desaturating the background, you might try lowering the contrast.

[Christian]

Thanks cletus, I'll give that a try tonight.

[ridetwistyroads]

At times blurring the backround has helped for me. You might try darkening as you desaturate as well?

[rutt]

You might look here: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=1011

I think making a good mask here is going to be tough because of the hair and similar colored background. But one of the nice things about the extract and blur background thing is that it doesn't have to be a perfect mask to work pretty well.

[Christian]

Ok, this came out much better, everyones advice has really helped out.
http://cnelsen.smugmug.com/photos/16753688-M.jpg

Rutt: That thread you linked to was excelent, unfortunately I'm currently stuck with PS elements. But I can see an upgrade is in my near future.

[DJ-S1]

Christian, this was so cute I wanted to play with it. It seemed a little red to me, this is what I came up with. Images like this are really important family memories, nice job!

http://daveorama.smugmug.com/photos/16755612-M.jpg

[Christian]

Christian, this was so cute I wanted to play with it. It seemed a little red to me, this is what I came up with. Images like this are really important family memories, nice job!

Did you just desaturate it, or did you change the color levels.? It definately looks beter with the red toned down.

[Christian]

Ok, I tried doing a remove color cast and think I got a little closer:

http://cnelsen.smugmug.com/photos/16756897-M.jpg

[DJ-S1]

I did de-saturate the red a bit, maybe 10-12? But I also picked a new white and black point. Made a new curves layer, and picked the right eyedropper to change the white point. I picked the brightest point on her sleeve. Then I picked the left eyedropper (black point) and picked a very drak area. I left the middle one (grey point) alone.

It seemed to brighten up the photo a touch and remove much of the red. Then the small de-sat and that's it. Oh, I ran it through a noise filter program (neat image) too.

I get this red cast a lot when I take indoor photos without a flash, so I'm used to having to fix 'em...:wxwax

[digismile]

Christian,

Here's a way that I often try when I need to remove a heavy colour cast. Although I use CS, I tried this on Elements 3.0 to confirm that it can be done.

What this method basically does is to create a Colour Blending Layer that is the opposite colour to the colour cast. This works just like a filter would work on the lens of your camera. We want to find a way to "block" the yellow spectrum of light and let everything else through. In this case we are doing it in Photoshop instead of at the time the photo was taken.

Besides removing the colour cast, it will have an overall desaturating effect as well.

1. Open your file and duplicate the background. (Ctrl-J) I always make a copy out of habit, just for security.

2. Use the sample colour tool and select an area that has the colour cast. Since this is an overall yellow cast, I selected a spot on the wall to the right of the kitchen cabinets. The colour selected was a yellowy orange.

3. Create a new blank layer. (Ctrl-Shft-N)

4. Fill the layer with the new colour (Alt-Back Space). Don't worry that you only have a big yellowly orange square and the photo is gone!

5. Now we need to invert the colour to get the opposite (Ctrl-I). It will now be a big blue square!

6. Now to get the photo back, go the the layers palette and click on the blue layer (you should have 3 layers: the background, a copy of the background and an un-named blue layer).

7. Now change the blending mode on the blue layer from NORMAL to COLOR.

8. Reduce the Opacity from 100% until you like what you see, probably in the 20 - 30% range. The colour cast is now gone.

From this point you can tweek the photo a bit more if desired. You might need to boost the constrast a bit using levels or adjust the highlights/shadows, but this method will bring the skin colours back to a more normal state.

It should only take a minute or two when you are familiar with the steps. Here's what it would produce:

http://digismile.smugmug.com/photos/16775425-M.jpg


Hope this helps.

Regards,
Brad

P.S. Small detail, but I also cloned out the loose thread on her shoulder.

[Christian]

Thanks guys for the tips, I'll give these techniques a try tonight and see what I come up with.

[DJ-S1]

Cool Brad, I'm gonna give that a try next chance I get. :thumb

[Lucky Hack]

Christian, Great shot, I have to agree with ridetwistyrodes... I know that some consider this blasphemy, but don't be afraid to use the blur brush to blur the bacground so much that it's almost unintelligible. It'll look like it was shot with a narrow depth of focus. Even when there's alot of contrast and crazyness in the background, if it's soft it gives the eye permission and a desire to focus on the crisp part of the image.

Good luck, great shot -Ian

[Christian]

I just upgraded to CS but haven't gotten used to moving arround in it yet. ( I was never that good with elements for that matter). Anyway, I plan on trying that extract technique rut pointed me to and see if I can combine that with some of the other techniques everyone has been gracious enough to suggest. I'll try to post my results this weekend and see what everyone thinks.

[Christian]

I can't believe the amount of time I've spent on this. I guess it's all part of the learning process. But I think I came up a decent version:
http://cnelsen.smugmug.com/photos/17021733-M.jpg

[cletus]

I can't believe the amount of time I've spent on this. I guess it's all part of the learning process. But I think I came up a decent version:
http://cnelsen.smugmug.com/photos/17021733-S.jpg
Looks good :thumb