Photo correction issue?

Gday, I'm a new member here and I have a question I hope someone can help with!
My daughter took some photos without a fill flash at sunrise this morning (ignore the date stamp) and as you can see, they look crap. It was taken at dawn on top of Mt Warning after a 3.5 hour slog starting at 2.30am, so she's understandably disappointed!

My PS skills arent brilliant, but I can get a result eventually. Does anyone know of a tute that would help? Or steer me in the right direction? I assume something to do with a mask and levels (I dont want to just click Brightness in, say, ACDSee and stuff up the background).
Any help greatly appreciated!
cheers, toon

What you need to do is to get the four people out of the photo.
Then the photo will be perfect.
You see this Earth was made for nature NOT people.
When you are looking at the sunrise on Mt Warning you are looking at God, so why are there any people in the picture?
What is in the photo are four imperfect beings cluttering up nature.

ok -harsh reply there! Don't think there is any need for that as not everyone takes a photo for the same reason. (also if god made the earth surely god made people therefore what's the difference? anyway...)
Am not a PS whizz, and everything I know am self taught by clicking around. What I would do is mask out the background (do you know how to do this?) and then alter the levels, as you said (I am assuming you don't have the photo in raw?) there will be more information to bring out in the people, but as you bring it out the quality will go down and will never look as clear as it would with flash, but you will be able to see the people that were there more.
If what you were after is how to actually mask and alter levels then say and I can go in depth.

hi,
my answer is very similar to pheonix, and i am novice also.... but a couple of things...
1. this is a good canadate for editing in raw... raw gives you more pixal data to work on the bright ness and contrast .... so if the picture still in the camera download the image as a raw file.... I understand cs you can edit a jpg in raw but it think it better using a raw format file.... t adjust the brightness and contrast....

2. my approach was a little different than what pheonix took... not saying better but different....
3. first i made a duplicate layer.....
4. i did a slight global adjustment with the levels, and tried a little bit with the curves ..... curves didn't help much but maybe that me....
4. i then mask out the people ( of the dup layer) and copy that to it own layer....
5. at that point with just the people on the new layer.... i did a level adjustment again but more aggressive .... used brightness a little bit and use gaurasian blue alittle bit to try and get rid of the artifacts.... that work well for the two gals... but the guys not enough... maybe put them on a seperat level and just work them....
6. I adjusted the level opacity some to cut down on the peoplee brightness and contrast that was evident compared to the background...

over all able to maintain the quality of the background.... the people a great improvement , looks a little artificial but far from perfect.... my techniques not good enough yet....

maybe the pros get on give us some some tips they use.....

tooninoz said:

Gday, I'm a new member here and I have a question I hope someone can help with!
My daughter took some photos without a fill flash at sunrise this morning (ignore the date stamp) and as you can see, they look crap. It was taken at dawn on top of Mt Warning after a 3.5 hour slog starting at 2.30am, so she's understandably disappointed!

My PS skills arent brilliant, but I can get a result eventually. Does anyone know of a tute that would help? Or steer me in the right direction? I assume something to do with a mask and levels (I dont want to just click Brightness in, say, ACDSee and stuff up the background).
Any help greatly appreciated!
cheers, toon

To both Jerry and Phoenix, thanks so much guys. Im not really experienced with masks etc, but Ive had a look at a few Masking/Levels 101 stuff and it has given me a bit of a handle on it. I'll keep going and see how it turns out! cheers!
Oh...Glennwriter? Do you not understand the irony of the dribble you wrote? Tosser....

Slightly more indepth just in case:
What I usually do to mask is to turn on quick mask and have the paintbrush selected and paint over the people or background (whichever you choose you can switch to the opposite by inverting, control I) If you are going to put this onto a duplicate layer though it might not be the most acurate way to go in which case you could use polygonal lasso tool or magnetic lasso tool. If you go into Image>adjutsments>levels you will have 3 arrows, these control the blacks, midtones, and highlights, I find if I bring up the midtones and highlights I have to bring in the blacks as well, if you go to far though it can look odd. I think have a play with a mix of everything is the way to go.

hi,
your welcome.... pheonix broght up a good point about using the select inverse.... that can work very well.....

if you need more tutorial let us know..... besides having several bookmarked already..smiling... my favorite is using a certain search criteria in my brwoser... for example.... search for PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL MASKING or use PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL SNOW ,,,, etc etc....
this bring up a lot of differes tutorial on the area you want both standard web and video......

tooninoz said:

To both Jerry and Phoenix, thanks so much guys. Im not really experienced with masks etc, but Ive had a look at a few Masking/Levels 101 stuff and it has given me a bit of a handle on it. I'll keep going and see how it turns out! cheers!
Oh...Glennwriter? Do you not understand the irony of the dribble you wrote? Tosser....

Spent a bit of time following what you both said, and tho' it isnt brilliant by any stretch......



Its a bit speckled and I tried to get rid of that and clean it up a bit, but I figure that;
1. It's an improvement, and in some way, it looks better than with a flash?
2. Its 6am on a sticky, humid morning so it kinda suits that look!

Guys, I cant thank you both enough. My daughter is just stoked and I was also able to apply the same to a cpl of other pics too. If you were in Aussie I'd buy you a beer, but you'll just have to do with this;


Cheers, toon

awesome thanks
The picture is about how I would expect it to look, the quality on the people is reduced, but you can see their faces and that's the important thing!
Masking and Levels are what I use more than anything and can be used on anything, it's great!

I would use an adjustment layer with the curves dialog and pull the curve slightly down in the bottom right corner. Than I would fill the mask so that only the faces are affected.

What would help is run a plugin that removes some of the noise afterwards.