Fix It For Me Friday
July 9, 2009 by Puna
Filed under Just Playing...
Tomorrow iHeartfaces.com is extending a gracious hand to people like me who want to save their shots. I’ve been looking forward to this. I was waiting until they did another Constructive Feedback Friday so I can figure out how to save this shot.
While in Florida visiting our BFFs last January, BFF Tracey snapped this photo of us using the husband’s camera. It was on a setting that made everything this hazy shade of blue and none of use could figure it out. But I really really like this picture…and I wanted to fix it.
And I tried everything under the sun that I knew of, more than once and in any type of configuration. And this is what I came up with and I’m still not happy. I don’t even remember what I did.
I need help. We look so happy don’t we? Can you help me please? Save us from a blue death in my external hard drive. I hope I make their deadline. Thank you.
Quick question for you? Do you happen to have this photo in RAW format? If so, the fix will be so, so easy by just changing the white balance setting.
Probably not what you want to hear, but I think if you only have a jpeg, the best route to go is a cross-processed look like you have above, or a nice B&W. I tried converting this photo to black & white using a gradient map (adjusting the levels some within the gradient map), and it turned out really nice.
Hey, it’s Marshall from I Heart Faces. First of all, very cool blog. I’m really diggin’ it. And you like JPG Magazine! High five! Ok, the picture. I agree with the previous commenter about the white balance being the issue. This looks like tungsten white balance which tells the camera to expect a very bluish light and compensate for it. In the absence of a RAW file, you kinda have to work with what you’ve got. Your processing of the image made it look as thought the toning was intentional, which is very good. It still seems a bit lacking in contrast, meaning there’s not enough dark blacks and light whites. My thought would be to just toss out the color altogether and got with black and white. I took the image into Photoshop and had a go at converting it. You can check that out here.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y248/fxmixer/lifesignatures.jpg
Besides the obvious conversion to black and white, I did a few other things to liven it up. I increased to overall brightness of the image by about 20 percent and I increased the overall contrast by 15 percent or so. I then applied a vignette to the image, darkening the edges to tone down some of the brightness there. Lastly I cropped in just a touch from the left and top to tighten up the composition.
I hope this was helpful, and if you have any questions about this or any other image, drop me an email. Cheers!
Wow Marshall, thank you so much! I think the black and white looks great. I knew that it couldn’t be returned to the great color of the Florida coastline but this looks really good. I’m going to try to recreate the one you did for us. I’m going out on a limb here but if I can’t do it, can I send you the high res and you can do it for me? It’s okay if you say no. I understand. I want to put it in our bedroom which is, of course, black and white.