Christian Photographers Community

I saw a tutorial for fixing pictures like this, but it was with Photoshop, which I don't have.  Is there a way to balance a photo like this with PSP?   I took it last night but forgot to turn my flash on.  I thought it might be good for playing with if I had a clue.  

What is it you want to do, Nita?  Just lighten it?  I don't think that the flash would have helped anyway as usually the flash only lightens at the most about 20 to 30 feet from you.

In PSP, you can do that.

Now, just a couple of seconds and I came up with this but you can take more time and work number by number...

Mine has taken away some of the detail of the sun but this was just a very swift trial.

Pat, what do you mean "number by number"?  Is there a tutorial for this.  I tried just lightening it.  Is that what you meant? Lighten it one number at a time?  

The tutorial I saw in DPC was using layers to modify. Do you think PSP has something like that.  I doubt it'd be legal on DPC, but nice to know anyway.

I went to Gamma correction under Colors/Brightness...

Tried that number by number.  I unlinked the three colours and tried each separately.

I also worked a wee bit with just the Brightness.

Interesting to see the tutorial.  Do you have a link for it?

Pat, I've never worked with the gammas.  Guess I'd better get to learning more.

 I laughed so hard at myself as I read your gentle reminder that the camera flash won't light up my 100 ft away view.  I laughed because I actually had forgotten that. LOL  I forgot to do anything but click away.  I'm not sure where my mind was.  As I recall, I didn't even use night settings.  It actually was not as dark as it looks.  OH well, being so photographically challenged, I have lots of exciting stuff to learn. haha
Here's the link.  It's for Photoshop, but many of the steps are interchangable.  I still can't get what I want in it.  And I don't know how to do a layer from a selection.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/contrast_masking.shtml

Well you can't do anything with this shot, as the camera has automatically exposed for the bright sky and therefore made a silhouette of the foreground, it is too drastic a difference, but normally you would do as Pat advises or use the "histogram" or "levels" or "curves"
or you could select the foreground and adjust with  gamma correction.
All these are found under " colours". not too bad a shot as it is actually  

I don't really see where it needs any correction, Nita, but I played around with it a little, just making the foreground a little lighter and look what happened!  

Jeanne, your playing around is interesting.  

I didn't know how much one could do with post editing until I joined DPC.  Amazing.  

I thought I would give it a try.  I used the freehand selection tool in PSP8 and went around the trees in the forground and darkened them. I then went up to selections and selected none and used the freehand tool again and drew around the trees in the background and made them darker too and again selected none.  The last step was I took the freehand tool and went around the water and beach and made it brighter and added more contrast.

Do you know how to use the freehand selection tool?

Personally I don't see much of a difference.  I think you did a wonderful job.  Beautiful photo!

This isn't a special picture or anything.......I just chose it because I wanted to see if the tutorial might work.  I couldn't do it, so thought maybe you could.  It's fun seeing what others come up with.

Sonja, I know how to use the selection tools, but that takes longer...haha....did you look at the tutorial I posted?  What do you think of it?    It was from a thread on DPC.

 

Good Morning.

Just took a swing by and saw this post.  I decided to play with your photo.
To begin with I think the photo is wonderful.  As far as tweaking I am going to list step by step what I do with my photos to give them that extra umph with Paint Shop Pro 7.

First of Course Open photo then Resize.

Second go to Effects then Enhance photo.  From there I use Automatic Color Balance and use a Temperature of 6500 degrees Kelvin.

Third I Click Effects again and go down to Automatic Saturation Enhancement
 I Keep the Bias set at "More Colorful" and the Strength set at "Normal"

Last go to Effects-Sharpen-Unsharp mask  Settings for unsharp mask are as follows
  Radius between .50 and 1.00  Strength set at 100 and clipping set at 1

Try this with your photos.  I believe you will be surprised.  

I used it on this shot.



I do Believe there was a decent amount of Quality lost resaving this shot then adding it to the internet.  

Have a great day all.  

John (TurboTech)

Quote from: Nita on November 14, 2003, 02:27:45 PM
Sonja, I know how to use the selection tools, but that takes longer...haha....did you look at the tutorial I posted?  What do you think of it?    It was from a thread on DPC.

 

I didn't see the post on dpc. I haven't been there to much lately.  Do you have  a link?

Sonja, here's the link to the original tut...is for photoshop.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/contrast_masking.shtml
  It isn't from DPC, but someone posted a link.

 Hi, John.  I'm printing out your steps to try.  I have psp7 too.

 

QuoteAs far as tweaking I am going to list step by step what I do with my photos to give them that extra umph with Paint Shop Pro 7.

 John, I've been playing with this the last few days and really like the ease.  For some photos, I can get just what I want without using adjustment layers.  This is great.  Thanks for posting it here.