Correcting A Bungled Shot From The FinePix E900
Umut Özlüer And Guest
Here is a photograph of Umut Özlüer the publisher of Holiday Magazine Turkiye praising a local artist and inviting her to say a few words at the magazine’s first birthday party. The image is a bit of a ‘cock-up’. I had intended to use the E900‘s small flash unit to fill in the facial details, but forgot to pop it up. As a result the picture taken at 1/50th at F 4 with the camera sensitivity set at 800 ISO is underexposed.
I wondered just how easy it would be to rescue something from the shot. One problem is that the background colours are discordant so any image in colour would lack impact in the right places. This is what I did.
Firstly, the image was loaded as .JPG into Adobe Photoshop and using my Power Retouche filters increased the exposure by 1.5 stops.
Secondly, I used Power Retouche’s ‘Black and White Studio‘ plug in to convert the colour image to monochrome with the film emulation set to Kodak Tri X.
Thirdly, Another Power Retouche filter, this time the Toned Print module was used to make the image seem more like photographic reportage. I chose ‘Silver Print’ and saved the result. But I still wasn’t happy with the result because on the screen, and therefore on the web the image seemed to have to vivid a blue cast. So:
Fourthly, I went to Photoshop Adjustments and de saturated the image until it took on a tone that I liked.
Fifthly, The Contrast/Lightness was toggled slightly to produce better highlights..
The result isn’t perfect, but it shows just what can be achieved in the Pixel Room even if you botch the shot in the camera!
Kindly note: This entry was abstracted from a longer [illustrated] version published at e900photography.com.
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