Over-exposed pictures rescued? (1 Viewer)

We were supposed to head off for my local patch at Ågesta on Saturday but my wife had to take a 99 year old friend to the eye clinic at the hospital so she could have her eyes examined. She enticed me into walking with her to the bus stop by offering to show me the place where she had seen a pair of Goshawks last Wednesday. In the event we didn't see any Goshawks but a nice male Sparrow Hawk flew past very close. Of course it wasn't until he had gone that it occured to me that I had a camera with me that might have let me get a decent flight shot.

It was on the way back home that things got interesting. I saw a black and white bird pecking at some logs by the side of the path and realized that it was a female Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. I've never been that close, at least not while carrying a camera and I started firing away. She stuck around for quite a while, not leaving until a couple of joggers with a child on a bike in tow passed by. As I headed home, elated, I suddenly remembered with a sinking feeling that I hadn't readjusted the exposure compensation since photographing a pair of Hawfinches in the birch tree outside the window earlier that morning.

When I downloaded the pictures I thought some of them retained quite a lot of feather detail and might be saveable so I did my best to adjust levels and curves in Photoshop and and was quite pleased with the results. However, when I looked again yesterday morning I was a bit disappointed. I looked again yesterday evening and wasn't sure what to think.

So what do you think? Were the pictures saveable and, if so, did I do a good job of it. I realise I would probably have been better shooting in RAW but I feel I have enough to learn at the moment without complicating things even more.

I'm including one resized, uncropped original for comparison purposes and to let you access the EXIF information, plus 2 processed images. I'd be really interested to hear your opinions.

Graham.

Graham,

Don't throw anything away, until you have a play.

All you need to do is open in photoshop, go to adjustment, levels.
Set these figures to
H 0
S 0
B 10

Top left of the screen,

Use the dark eyedropper

Click on a dark shadow pixel in your background area and it will rescue your images.

You'll need to adjust your highlight, and the fact that you have a slight CYAN cast.

There's not enough meat on your image for me to show a clear comparison, you'll have to do the adjustment on your high-res original.

Don't use any sliders for adjusting.

Not a bad job, especially on the portrait format shot. There is some loss of highlight detail, but considering the starting point I'd be quite pleased with the salvage.

As regards RAW - it's not really all that hard. What it does allow is exposure adjustment with levels and curves,and white balance correction (and hence colour cast) on the original data. It's really the equivalent of developing a negative as compared to scanning the resulting print.

pe'rigin said:

All you need to do is open in photoshop, go to adjustment, levels.
Set these figures to
H 0
S 0
B 10
Top left of the screen,
Use the dark eyedropper
Click on a dark shadow pixel in your background area and it will rescue your images.
You'll need to adjust your highlight, and the fact that you have a slight CYAN cast.
There's not enough meat on your image for me to show a clear comparison, you'll have to do the adjustment on your high-res original.
Don't use any sliders for adjusting.

Click to expand...

Thanks pe'rigrin,
This is very different from the way Im used to working and I think probably more advanced.
I have Photoshop 7. I had to click on Options in Levels to access H, S, B. I then entered the values you suggested for Shadows and used the dark eyedropper as suggested. The results look promising. Then I adjusted the Cyan level in Colour Balance or is it better to use Replace Colour? That's what I would normally do. Don't really know whay to do about Highlights expect adjusting Curves.
Graham

gordon g said:

Not a bad job, especially on the portrait format shot. There is some loss of highlight detail, but considering the starting point I'd be quite pleased with the salvage.

As regards RAW - it's not really all that hard. What it does allow is exposure adjustment with levels and curves,and white balance correction (and hence colour cast) on the original data. It's really the equivalent of developing a negative as compared to scanning the resulting print.

Click to expand...

Thanks Gordon. And I definitely intend to try using RAW.
Graham

Morning Graham,

You get rid of the cast in exactly the same way as for shadow, go to the adjust highlight eyedropper and then select your pixel. Try this one.
H 217
S 0
B 96

You can set your adjustments to suit your camera.

By simply creating a grey stepped test sheet for both highlight and shadow, convert to CMYK and note your readings. Select the correct adjustment for your needs and stick with it. This stepped wedge will give you the correct settings for, litho, web, and digital printing. If you only want to view over the intranet, then you'll need to 'saturate' your colours to view, just like a tranparency.

Use replacement colour for fine colour adjustment, i.e on the woodpecker, try to limit the use of curves on an overall image.

pe'rigin said:

Morning Graham,

You get rid of the cast in exactly the same way as for shadow, go to the adjust highlight eyedropper and then select your pixel. Try this one.
H 217
S 0
B 96

You can set your adjustments to suit your camera.

By simply creating a grey stepped test sheet for both highlight and shadow, convert to CMYK and note your readings. Select the correct adjustment for your needs and stick with it. This stepped wedge will give you the correct settings for, litho, web, and digital printing. If you only want to view over the intranet, then you'll need to 'saturate' your colours to view, just like a tranparency.

Use replacement colour for fine colour adjustment, i.e on the woodpecker, try to limit the use of curves on an overall image.

Click to expand...

Thanks! I find this really interesting though it also makes me realize just how limited my knowledge of Photoshop is. Maybe being largely self-taught I've just learned the wrong things. I planned to ask some more questions but I think I'll practise using what you've already told me first.
Graham

I see we have some Photo shop experts.
Any advice how can I make this pic better?

ody said:

I see we have some Photo shop experts.
Any advice how can I make this pic better?

Click to expand...

Im far from being an expert, Ody; but heres a quick edit of your image. I used Adjustments-exposure and some Levels in Photoshop CS2 to re-claim some detail from the whites. I may have darkened the image a little too much; but it gives an idea of what can be done.