This happens to me a lot. I have a shot that works but has some blown highlight details. If the shot was taken raw, sometimes it's possible to recover the details with a second raw conversion. But then what? I've had mixed success taking the next step. I have two images, one a success story and one has been an source of considerable frustration.

Let's save the success and start with this image:



Nice enough, but the blown background could be so much better. The background was beautiful. Here is a shot of the window without the girl taken from outside with the background properly exposed:



The girl in the window was shot in raw, so a second conversion was able to recover the background:



OK, so how to combind the two images of the girl in the window?

The most obvious approach is to make some sort of selection. For example, I select the darkest areas of the second image, clear them and then layer it on top of the origiial. In theory this sounds good, but in my experience:

1. It always looks fake, even when done very professionally. I can tell right away that the Singapore girl was superimposed on the harbor in those magazine ads.
2. It's never as easy as it seems it should be. In this case there is a wisp of hair over the girl's forehead that is very hard to select correctly.

I've tried really hard to learn to make these selections and make them work, but I guess I have more hope for something that works by color theory.

A second thing I've tried is various software that can combine over and under exposed images to result in improved dynamic range. I've tried a few of these. One is Fred Miranda's Dynamic Range Improvement Pro. Here is what it did with the two versions of the girl:



Better, but no cigar. I have to admit that it's better than I've been able to do. But I want the background and the girl and I want them to look natural together. If possible I don't want to have to slave to make a selection. So far, I have hated all my efforts.

I suppose that the real lesson here is that I should have used a flash when I shot this to equalize the light from the foreground and background. Live and learn. But there is no next time for this particular image. So I'd appreciate any help. All the full resolutions of the image are here. The raw image is here.

OK that was frustrating. Here is a success story. I started out with this:



and ended up with this:



It's subtle (compared with the improved fall colors), but I recovered the clouds and now there is a sky instead of a white blank. Here is how I did this:

1. Image->Mode->LAB
2. Duplicate layer, blending mode multiply:

3. Apply the following curve to the L channel of the uppermost layer:

After this move, the topmost layer looks like this:



And the blend looks like this:



From here my conventional technique worked to get to the final version: A+B steepening. L sharpening. Move to CMYK and establish white and black points. Fine.

What's going on here? I didn't even need a raw conversion. My curve was extremely steep in the highlights and this brought out the hidden detail in the sky. But this left no room in my gamut for the fall colors and trees. They would have to be either way too dark or else have lost their detail. So I flattened out this curve to keep the non-sky areas as light as possible. That way the multiply blended the good sky with the white sky to get the good sky (since white is the identity element for photoshop multiply blends.) By keeping the rest of the shot as close to white as possible, I had minimum impact on the non sky parts of the image, nothing I couldn't fix with curves afterward.

Here the problem I fixed wasn't nearly as bad as the problem with the first picture. Perhaps that's why I succeeded this time.

Anyone still with me? Anyone think this is an interesting game? You don't have to use my image. I'd love to hear success and failure stores with other images. Let's play.

John, I don't really know a fraction of what you do about photoshop, but I thought my naive approach might tickle some brain cells or inspire some new thoughts about how to solve this problem. I agree that masking is difficult and is really hard to do without looking fake. While this certainly isn't the final answer I was able to improve it a little. Recipe to follow.


Recipe:
Place the darker picture as the background layer and the lighter picture on top. Fill set to 50%.
Used Shadow/Highlight to further lighten shadows. Used 100% with 100%tonal range. (seems extreame)
Used curved to lighten the midtones and darken the highlights a little more.
Cloned out dust bunny in sky .
Increased saturation on the blue channel only.

Perhaps by using two versions that were slightly less extreame that something like this might work. Also some more advanced blending technique might work ( I really don't know much at all about the different blending modes, but I know it is something I should learn.) I did all this on the M.jpg. If I get some time I'll play around with the RAW file.

One more try. This is the dark imaged with the midtones pulled down in curves layer stacked with my final image from above at 50% fill with H/S at 50%. Starting to look a little funky, but the sky is better. I think maybe stacking the right combination of images from the RAW file could produce a satisfactory image, but it would require a bit of trial and error. I think I have demonstrated both trial and error.

Before:





After:



It is a slightly different starting image but to get the clouds back? Rutt,
you da MAN!

Thanks,
Ian

Rutt, why not just use a Layer Mask for your two exposures? Erase the stuff you don't want. Or it that the kind of task you're trying to avoid?

Originally Posted by wxwax Rutt, why not just use a Layer Mask for your two exposures? Erase the stuff you don't want. Or it that the kind of task you're trying to avoid?

Exactly the kind of task I want to avoid. I'm terrible at it and the results nearly always look unnatural to me. I've found that it can work with blurring the background sometimes. But the very fact that the background is being blurred and that the exposure of the background isn't changed makes it a lot easier.

But I'm willing to learn. That's why I posted this. Please show me that I'm wrong.

OK. Here is another attempt. Better, I think. Not perfect, there is some artifact present at 100% mag, but they seem minimal at normal viewing size.
Recipe:
Used the "extract" filter to extract the girl and building and then pasted them onto the sky background. Used a little cloning at some of the edges, but not too much hand work. I used Scott Kelby's extraction method. What do you think John?

Originally Posted by rutt This happens to me a lot. I have a shot that works but has some blown highlight details. If the shot was taken raw, sometimes it's possible to recover the details with a second raw conversion. But then what? I've had mixed success taking the next step. I have two images, one a success story and one has been an source of considerable frustration. Let's save the success and start with this image:

Use your flash. :)

Originally Posted by tmlphoto Used the "extract" filter to extract the girl and building and then pasted them onto the sky background. Used a little cloning at some of the edges, but not too much hand work. I used Scott Kelby's extraction method. What do you think John?

Well at normal viewing size it does look good, but as you say there are artifacts and probably too much error prone work. See the artifact under the shorts? What is Scott Kelby's extraction methond?

I'd like something that works well enough for really large prints, and in my experience, selections and local moves just don't. Often it can look good enough for a dgrin or FM post or enven contest. But when it comes to a 13x19 print, ithe edges are obvious.

Originally Posted by mercphoto Use your flash. :)

Yes, I think that's the big lesson of this particular shot. I even said that in the initial post. But that won't save this image and I can't reshoot it (trust me.)

But there are many reasons not to give up on this topic. The flash wouldn't have helped the fall landscape. If there were glass on the window, it might cause reflections. I tried using multiple flashes to shoot a indoor panorama in order to equalize the light with the outdoors, but it didn't work very well. The rroom was just too large and the light from the windows too bright. It was no match for my three flashes. I think I would have needed some kind of heavy duty studio lights and that was just outside the scope of the project. I ended up using some sort of selections fo that project, but was never really happy with the result. You can see the reslts here.)

Sometimes you just can't use a flash at all because it's too intrusive or because you didn't bring it (I know that last is lame, but there it is.)

So the flash lesson is important and I won't forget it, but it doesn't change the importance of this topic.

Originally Posted by rutt Well at normal viewing size it does look good, but as you say there are artifacts and probably too much error prone work. See the artifact under the shorts? What is Scott Kelby's extraction methond? I'd like something that works well enough for really large prints, and in my experience, selections and local moves just don't. Often it can look good enough for a dgrin or FM post or enven contest. But when it comes to a 13x19 print, ithe edges are obvious.

Scott Kelby Extraction Method
1- Filter/extract
2- Trace image with "edge highlighter" tool. (fairly quick to do, doesn't have to be perfect)
3- Highlight part to extract
4- Extract
5- Duplicate the layer, use History brush to fix "dropout" areas
6- Choose background picture, paste onto new layer of extraction pic.
7- Put background layer behind extraction.
8- Use erase tool to clean up

I think it would be very difficult to find a method that would work at the larger print sizes without a fair amount of manual work, but this method seems to give a good start. Admitedly, this was a fairly easy extraction. It did do quite well with the hair though. A little fill flash would go a long way. It might be nice to use the flash with some negative flash compensation so that the effect is more subtle and only partially brings up the shadows and then use Shadow/Hightlight to bring them up a little more. Well, I think I have reached my limit on this one.

Thanks, Thomas. You did a lot. I'm still hoping for a global technique like the one I used for the sky in the autumn picture. But I'll have to try your methods out when I get a chance.

Originally Posted by rutt Exactly the kind of task I want to avoid. I'm terrible at it and the results nearly always look unnatural to me. I've found that it can work with blurring the background sometimes. But the very fact that the background is being blurred and that the exposure of the background isn't changed makes it a lot easier. But I'm willing to learn. That's why I posted this. Please show me that I'm wrong.

It is time consuming, no question. IMHO it will yield the best result in this extreme example. I'll do it this evening when I get home, you can see what you think. Masking has the added benefit of allowing you to darken the walls slightly, so that the lighting is a little more balanced.

You have tapped into my compulsive side. I ran a small "blur" brush around the extraction edge and fixed a couple of artifacts. Still not perfect, but I think with a little more time and attention this method could work well. No pain, no gain .

Originally Posted by wxwax It is time consuming, no question. IMHO it will yield the best result in this extreme example. I'll do it this evening when I get home, you can see what you think. Masking has the added benefit of allowing you to darken the walls slightly, so that the lighting is a little more balanced.

Thanks. If you do spend your time doing this, please work with the full sized images and save a high quality version (jpeg2k lossless, tiff, psd, jpeg @ quality 12) I like this shot a lot and have been pretty frustrated by it. I'd love to have a version that works. Thanks again.

Another possibility. I know none of you want to hear something good about the Sigma DSLR's but I thought of a possibility on how you could slove this problem. Sigma Photo Pro is the program that is used to read the raw files out of the SD9 and SD10. The are ways to do this with PS CS but SPP has some very interesting features that make fixing problems like this very very easy. They have a feature called Fill Light that is used by moving a slider to add light to the underexposed portions of a photo without affecting the properly exposed or overexposed regions of the image. Dont ask me how this works because I dont have a clue and noone on the Sigma Forum at dpreview has a clue either. All we know is that it works wonders. Here is an example

Before

After

This took about 5 seconds to do. There is aot more I could do to this image to get rid of some of the obvious deficiencies, I just wanted to point out how the fill light feature works and thats the only adjustments I made to this image.

I do not have PS CS, it is in the mail on the way to me :), but I have been told that it has a new feature called shadow/highlight that is very similair to the Sigma fill light feature. I assume that it would not work as well on jpg's as it would on a raw file so working on the raw file in CS would probably be the answer. I know that 90% of the time I can recover the underexposed portions of my images when I underexpose the original intentionally to retrieve the blown highlights. SPP makes this very easy to where most of the time I am automatically underexposing the image by around 1 stop and adding 1 stop of fill light. I wish I could Just figure out how to do this in CS for you and then post how it is done, but I dont have CS to try it out yet. Mybe in a week or two I will have a workflow posted on here for you expliaing how its done. I just thought I might tell you that alot of people who own a Sigma say that this feature works close to the same way that the fill light feature in SPP works. And it almost always work for me. Give it a try if you have CS. Or buy a Sigma. lmao just kidding. I bet some of you were expecting that at some point in here. Anyways, I think shadow.highlights in CS might be your answer. Let me knwo if you try it out and how it works.

Originally Posted by rutt Yes, I think that's the big lesson of this particular shot. I even said that in the initial post.

Mea culpa, I missed that. :(

But there are many reasons not to give up on this topic.

Agreed. But alas, its way over my head to contribute, I'll just have to read and see if I can understand any of it. :)

Originally Posted by rutt Thanks. If you do spend your time doing this, please work with the full sized images and save a high quality version (jpeg2k lossless, tiff, psd, jpeg @ quality 12) I like this shot a lot and have been pretty frustrated by it. I'd love to have a version that works. Thanks again.

Cool, that's what I've been doing, I did a wee bit this morning.

Originally Posted by tmlphoto You have tapped into my compulsive side. I ran a small "blur" brush around the extraction edge and fixed a couple of artifacts. Still not perfect, but I think with a little more time and attention this method could work well. No pain, no gain .

Another way to do this is to select the extraction and under the "select" menu, select "Feather" (or Alt + Ctrl + D for PCs). I usually use 2 or 3 pixels for the feather. Any more and the selection has a strange look. This works pretty good for most extractions and is faster than using the blur tool.

IMHO!

Hutch

I have only used this once, but it seemed to to a good job.

Sam



Digital Blending