Shadowed Face

[acd19701]

I have been a lurker on here for awhile, now I need your help. Please help!!! My DD loves this photo, but I don't like the shadows on her face. She absolutely had to have her picture made in this location. Is there anything I can do in CS4 to fix this? This picture has not been edited, they are straight out of the camera. Any help is greatly appreciated. I know there are many talented photographers on this site.

[DonnaNJ]

Hi.. Glad you came out of lurkdom :-) I don't use CS I use PSE so don't know if this will work.. one of the options in the Curves adjustment is to lighten shadows.. you might want to try that and see if you like it better... BTW are you able to retake the photo? If you did it with fill flash that would solve it from the get go

[Jen D]

Hopefully somebody can come with some advice. I always just mess things up when I try to fix anything like this. That is a tough one.

[dugarner]

I use PSE, not PSCS, but this might give you some ideas.

http://www.designerdigitals.com/digi...ows-faces.html

You want to do an adjustment layer. The method referenced in the link above is the way you "fake" an adjustment layer in PSE.

HTH!

[Amy L]

Welcome! I see why your dd loves this photo! Here's what I learned once from a tutorial by Steve Patterson:

1. Open your image.
2. Make a new layer for editing by clicking on Alt (mac Option) key and the select new layer button at the bottom of the layers palette. The New Layer dialog box comes up. In the "Mode" box, choose "Overlay". In the box below this, choose "Fill with Overlay Color--neutral gray". In the layers palette, you should now have a new grey layer above your original photo layer.
3. Select the brush tool.
4. In the Options bar at the top of the screen, choose a soft brush. The size will depend on the size of the item you want to affect. Lower the opacity to about 10%.
5. To lighten an area, set the foreground color to white. To darken, set it to black.
6. Working on the grey layer, zoom in on the area in question and start "painting" with your brush tool. The low opacity of your brush allows you to make very gradual changes that aren't that noticeable. You can repeat the painting till the lightening or darkening is to your satisfaction.

This method is great because you don't touch the original photo layer.

Let me know if this needs clearing up! I am by no means a tutorial writer lol!

[anke]

Oh cool one Amy!!! thanks for the mini tut, I didn't know this one either

[susiecw]

Amy, I didn't know how to do that, so thank you for the lesson. Can't wait to try it.

[acd19701]

Thanks for the great help. I would love to retake this picture, but it is in my hometown, about 2.5 hours away. Thanks again for the advice.