Ruined photo, or rescue opportunity?

[kennephoto]

Hello I recently shot a wedding and during the group photos it became rather rushed as I was given a very short amount of time to set up for my shots. During the chaos and confusion I think one of my flashes malfunctioned or simply turned off, here is the resulting photo. My question, is this photo ruined or is there a way to rescue it? The shadows on a few faces is what is in question if you didn't notice right away Hopefully this isn't a huge fail on my part! Thank you everyone!

[Menace]

Looks bad - especially guy in the background.

 I take it even in the haste, you took a couple of shots of this gathering? Are the shadows on the same faces on all the shots? Otherwise in PS one can transplant well exposed faces on top of the under exposed ones 

Good luck

[Marsu42]

My question, is this photo ruined or is there a way to rescue it?

As long as the data is there you can rescue it, though it might involve some work. Even the guy in the back has some resolution left in his face, so you can mask (with smooth alpha-border) the shadow in PS & raise it, then correct for the white balance. As long as you downscale the shot to the resolution you posted people might not even recognize the edit & be more worried about the clipped whites and cut feet :-> ... but if you didn't take $10k for the wedding and the clients aren't amateur photogs I'd say you'd be still ok.

[scrappydog]

Not sure if ruined.  I would probably look to boost the shadows in Photoshop (Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights) by selectively creating masks of the areas that need the most work.  It would help a lot if you shot Raw.

[pwp]

Please tell us you shot RAW. If you didn't, let this be the day that you switch to 100% RAW shooting.

There is work to do with this image, but it's by no means lost. If this needs to be your money shot and you don't feel up to the task, pay someone to do it for you. If the result still looks a bit weird, it's extraordinary how much conversion to B&W can conceal. Good luck, and post the rescued image when it's done.

-PW

[K-amps]

Please tell us you shot RAW. If you didn't, let this be the day that you switch to 100% RAW shooting.

There is work to do with this image, but it's by no means lost. If this needs to be your money shot and you don't feel up to the task, pay someone to do it for you. If the result still looks a bit weird, it's extraordinary how much conversion to B&W can conceal. Good luck, and post the rescued image when it's done.

-PW

+1

[joshmurrah]

pwp's post is spot on.

If you shot this in RAW, it's definitely "improvable", I've saved shots worse than this.

And I agree that if it's not 100% satisfactory, it's amazing how much better it'll look converted to B&W.

[kennephoto]

Oh I shoot raw always but I don't think I can post a 20mb file can I? I'm not very good with photoshop if you know of any guides or videos tht can illustrate how to do this that would help otherwise I will just try the ideas you guys listed.

[kennephoto]

Looks bad - especially guy in the background.

 I take it even in the haste, you took a couple of shots of this gathering? Are the shadows on the same faces on all the shots? Otherwise in PS one can transplant well exposed faces on top of the under exposed ones 

Good luck

The shadows are the same in the other shots I did get a shot where the flashes did it fire at all maybe I can use that somehow.

[Marsu42]

Oh I shoot raw always but I don't think I can post a 20mb file can I?

Either post the full-size jpeg to minus.com or the like and link it inline, or upload the raw to some file sharing service - yes, you can use the latter for things except copyright infringement :-p

[kennephoto]

Oh I shoot raw always but I don't think I can post a 20mb file can I?

Either post the full-size jpeg to minus.com or the like and link it inline, or upload the raw to some file sharing service - yes, you can use the latter for things except copyright infringement :-p

I will have to do that when I get home from work 

[K-amps]

Depending on how you want to compromise... you could recover some detail from the shadows of the guy behind the groom... IMHO he is the deal breaker the way he is...


I did a quick and dirty Shadow pull in CS5 on a crop of your shot..  some exposure tune / NR / color/ hue adjustments to get it close..

Didnt bother with his neck since this was a proof of concept... with a RAW file and more time you could do much better.

[kennephoto]

Depending on how you want to compromise... you could recover some detail from the shadows of the guy behind the groom... IMHO he is the deal breaker the way he is...


I did a quick and dirty Shadow pull in CS5 on a crop of your shot..  some exposure tune / NR / color/ hue adjustments to get it close..

Didnt bother with his neck since this was a proof of concept... with a RAW file and more time you could do much better.

This seems like good news to me!

[dirtcastle]

Post the full-size, original file. That will give people a chance to post high quality edits. 

[kennephoto]

Post the full-size, original file. That will give people a chance to post high quality edits.

I will do that as soon as I get home!