can this photo be 'fixed' ?

stayawake

stayawake

New member
I'm almost too embaressed to post this - but I thought if anyone could help,you girls could. :)
I was looking back through some of my photos of my son, and I guess I was just a brain-dead new mom (he's 3 weeks old here) because I have a series of would-be adorable photos that are basically garbage. I will try to save this today, to see what I can do. Does anyone have any tips? Or is it pretty much too far gone?? LOL

p1000160ad5.jpg
 
aww cute pic! but I don't know if it can be saved. there's a lot of noise. and if you reduced the noise then it wouldnt be very sharp. I'll see what i can do with it; i like playing with pictures.
 
Is that the full res honey? I wouldnt mind playing with it, im not the greatest at photo editing but I would love to give it a shot anyway! What a cutie, I LOVE that outfit!
 
sadly yes, it is full rez. :( I might add that I was using my brand new camera that I had had for all of 24 hours and I was just learning different settings. I should have used my old camera for this shot. I've tried everything I can think of, and I'm still not even close to happy. I'm playing with a LO where the photo is really really tiny. :)
 
I was just going to say, when i zoomed out it looks a lot better. here's what I did, but its not any different than the original lol. everything i did just made it worse.

p1000160ad5.jpg

yah, not any different is it? sorry, it tried! i hate it when i think i'm taking an awesome picture, then when it upload it i realize somethings off, usually the focus. I've had my rebel xt for over a year now and i still take bad pics. but i'm learning!
 
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The photo is a bit pixelated, so I would only use it at a smaller size:

p1000160ad5_edit_smaller.jpg


p1000160ad5_editcopy.jpg
 
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Dawn, I LOVE what you did - I'm going to work it into a small size on my page right now (I'll post here when I've finished if anyone is interested...)
Thank you SO much everyone for playing with this. :) This is one photo I'm going to have to say is 'good enough' since I can't go back in time and take it again. :)
 
I so know what you mean! I had a P&S, but a good one at that, when my son was first born. I have so many pictures that are just full of noise, ridiculously full of it. I just gave them all a soft effect and figure, what are you going to do. And I know what you mean about thinking you are taking a great photo now, too. I don't know how many out of focus or the focus is on the wrong thing pictures I get now with my dSLR. I never had that problem with my old film SLR, don't know why it happens so often now.
 
Glad you can use it, Lindy! In case anyone is curious, here's what I did: opened it in Adobe Camera Raw, fixed the exposure and darkened the blacks; then opened it in PS, burned the black where it still wasn't black enough, ran it through Noiseware (this program is expensive but magical) and then cloned some spots on the face where the color had gotten weird.
 
WOW! i just had to peek in here and say Dawn, your a magician!!

I have tons of photos like that...maybe you could figure out a fee schedule and help me too. :D
 
All of you girls who tried are BRILLIANT!
Better than anything my measly NeatImage + sharpening masks + desaturation could fix!
 
My last photo I scrapped is on my 12:44pm LO in my gallery. It was poor quality, fuzzy & all just like yours. I ran a soft filter on it, and it looks like it was supposed to be that way, haha!

Most of my pics from the hospital turned out bad, because Dh didn't use the flash :(. So I have to convert them to B&W and run filters to try to fix them up good enough.
 
Since I'm always taking less then stellar photos and spend most of my time retouching them, I thought I'd try my hand at this... Just thought I'd share with everyone if it'll help anyone else who might want to know....

Not sure if it's as good as everyone's but, here's my take...

p1000160ad5.jpg


For those who use CS3, this is what I did:
1. Image>Adjustments>Highlights/Shadows>%50 shadow, 0% highlights

2. Duplicate photo layer>Blend Mode=Overlay>50% Opacity

3. Duplicate photo layer again>Blend Mode=Screen>16% Opacity

You can play around with the blend mode opacities until you reach the desired affect.

4. Merge all the layers together

5. Image>Adjustments>Photo Filter>Cooling Filter (80)=16% (This was to reduce the orange/red color cast)

6. Filter>Smart Blur>Radius=1.6>Threshold=25.0 (This is to reduce the grainy noise)

That's all!!
 
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Maybe playing with some presets in lightroom will give you something you like. I don't have mine installed right now but as soon as I can find the disk I would be happy to try for you. I have lots of photos of Leo that are nowhere near perfect but I scrap them anyway blending the photo and making them black and white hides a multitude of sins lol. Hugs Crystal xx
 
That is a great LO! I have a lot of older pics that are from our old digital camera that are not great, so I always make the photo smaller. good job!
 
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