PP Example - Any Hints/Tips?

Just to clarify, I'm really just learning about post processing and up till now have generally kept it to a really minimal level. Hence the fact I'm looking for some constructive criticism / any hints or tips I can get.

Last night I attended a reunion night for the Rock/Metal club I used to go to in my late teens / early 20s. The actual club closed its doors nearly 15 years ago now (makes me feel old!) so the reunion night was held in a nearby venue. I took a bunch of photos and have been asked for the best ones to go on a website for the event.

During the night with the ambient light being 'disco lighting' the lighting was predominantly red, with some blue and purple thrown in. I wanted to keep the appropriate (red) colour cast to the photos to give them a sense of the atmosphere on the night, but the ambient light was not bright enough to take sharp pictures, and the flash tended to wash out the colour of the light, not to mention producing quite a few overexposed faces.

Below is my attempt to compensate. Not the best picture of the night but a suitable example to work with as it had the flaws mentioned above plus a general lack of sharpness.

I first used RPP to create a custom white balance restoring the red light cast from the venue (and get rid of a rather unpleasant greenish cast - not quite sure where that came from as there were no green lights as far as I recall). Also used some sharpening, highlight restoration and so forth.

Then I imported into GIMP, cropped, resized and used the smudge tool plus a little dodge/burn to even out the skin tones a bit in an attempt to make the face look less overexposed (the highlight restoration in RPP had some effect but only went so far.) Anyway, below you can see the three stages. Any comments on how I could improve it further would be most welcome.


Original Camera JPEG, (Resized, Original was shot in RAW+ so this is the camera JPEG, not a JPEG version of the RAW file)...

[IMG]http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb411/msitaylor/Processing%20Stages/IMGP1816ocj.jpg[/IMG]



JPEG version of RAW file after processing in RPP (Resized)...

[IMG]http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb411/msitaylor/Processing%20Stages/IMGP1816RPP.jpg[/IMG]


'Final' JPEG after further processing in GIMP...

[IMG]http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb411/msitaylor/Processing%20Stages/IMGP1816.jpg[/IMG]

It just looks like a red biased pic to me. Problem is unless you were their on the night it's going to look like a badly PPed pic.

I actually prefer the first version ( but it needs more contrast - particularly his face )

The intended audience will be primarily (I'd imagine almost exclusively) people who were there on the night. Plus it will be in the context of quite a few group shots in which the red lighting is clearly visible, i.e you can actually see some of the lights. In those particular shots the bright white flash light just looks plain wrong.

I tried quite a few without the flash. Some of those with people basically standing still came out quite well. Those with people dancing, on the other hand, were almost all blurred, even with the ISO ramped up really high. Now if it were the kind of dancing where people didn't move their heads much, it wouldn't be too bad. You could get away with a bit of motion blur in the limbs giving a sense of movement and all that. However as mentioned this was rock and metal... rockers/metalheads just don't do non-head-moving type dancing.

If I do something similar in future I'll be tempted just to underexpose everything and rescue the exposures in PP. Allows using faster shutter speeds and is much easier than rescuing overexposures. Particularly with 14-bit RAW. However, I didn't really think it out too well beforehand and I can't go back and take the photos again.

What ISO is this shot?

I had a play; set levels black point, selected his face and neck, copied the selection into a new layer, adjusted into b&w then a bit of dodge and burn, reduced the layer opacity as required.

This is what I it turned out like
[IMG]http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad254/weldingblues/Modified%20forum%20shots/Edit4MarkTaylor.jpg[/IMG]

I will of course remove if required to do so.

My attempts,various selections and levels adjustments

CoDa's version is good.

Roy, too much clipping! LOL

I think the biggest problem with this type of shot is multi coloured light. Same with concerts, can be really difficult, especially as light levels keep changing!

The original seems overexposed to me. Here's my dialled down version, possibly slightly overdone

[IMG]http://i807.photobucket.com/albums/yy358/thoughton/IMGP1816.jpg[/IMG]

i think you are right,having looked at them again

The first step in editing is deciding which to keep and which to bin.
Before binning a shot take a moment to figure out what went wrong.
I suspect spot metering and manual settings would have served you well under those lighting conditions, as well as reviewing your shots and checking your histograms.

as for this shot, I'd bin it.
you might try adding some noise, b&w conversion or duo toning it for an Andy Worhal look...

sorry if that seems harsh.

but honestly, I try to think of photoshop as my spice rack... great for seasoning a well made dish, but all the seasoning in the world won't save a burnt mess stuck to the bottom of the pan...

blown highlights is blown. you cannot save what isn't in the file.