Help with overexposed picture.

[Firefyter]

I have a shot that I took in Cozumel last week of a shark that is severely overexposed. I had been taking pictures in the swimthroughs, and when I came up into the light, there he was just gliding over the reef. I snapped a quick pic before he got too far away, but it's barely recognizable. There were about 30 of them there in all, but the rest of them stayed out of range, so this is the only one I actually got a shot of. I'm using an older version of Photoshop, 5.5. Is there anything I can do, or would some of you like a shot at fixing it? I would really appreciate any and all help you can give.

Thanks in advance,
Thomas

 

[Charlie99]

I played around for a couple minutes. Duplicating layer after layer with the blending mode "Multiply" came up with pretty much the same result as playing around with a Levels adjustment layer.

You might be able to ID the type of shark, but otherwise useless. Maybe somebody else will do better, but the data just isn't there in the picture the best I can tell.

 

[Firefyter]

I played around for a couple minutes. Duplicating layer after layer with the blending mode "Multiply" came up with pretty much the same result as playing around with a Levels adjustment layer.

I did the same thing with the levels adjustment, and got pretty much the same results..

Maybe somebody else will do better, but the data just isn't there in the picture the best I can tell.

That's what I was afraid of..... I appreciate the effort, especially since UW photography and photo manipulation are both new to me.

Thanks again.

 

[diversteve]

I did the same thing with the levels adjustment, and got pretty much the same results..

That's what I was afraid of..... I appreciate the effort, especially since UW photography and photo manipulation are both new to me.

Thanks again.

Ok, I used all the tricks in the book to get this, basically a combination of Kodak's Digital ROC filter followed by Power Retouche's exposure compensation, some manual tweaking of the contrast, and a little cloning to remove the backscatter gives you this result.

It's way too blue and I'm not exactly happy with the foreground darkness, but at least you can see the shark....tired of playing with it now, maybe I'll post a better one later.

 

[Cecil]

This is why I hate overexposed pictures, there just us not much that can be done to save them. I set my PnS camera to -2ev for just this reason, underexposed can be saved.

 

[justleesa]

The res is too low to get anything out of it...could you email me a full res picture?
Not promising that it could be better, but I'll try and play with it a bit.
PM me for details

Wait...it was too early for me to think straight...I had dl'd the thumbprint

I worked on it a bit and this is what came out.
With better res, it could be a touch clearer....Not great, but proof that you saw it

 

[justleesa]

sjspeck & Charlie, you guys did a great job!!!!

 

[Firefyter]

The res is too low to get anything out of it...could you email me a full res picture?
Not promising that it could be better, but I'll try and play with it a bit.
PM me for details

Wait...it was too early for me to think straight...I had dl'd the thumbprint

I worked on it a bit and this is what came out.
With better res, it could be a touch clearer....Not great, but proof that you saw it

Wow!! I never thought it would clean up near this good...Thanks, Lisa....I've always admired your photgraphy skills, but it seems there's no end to your talents

Thanks to everyone else for the efforts, I really appreciate it.

BTW, I have the original saved in tiff format if anyone wants it, but it's a huge file, in the neighborhood of 11 meg. Of course I can adjust this, just let me know how you want it sized.

Thanks again everybody, just one more reason to love this place

 

[justleesa]

Wow!! I never thought it would clean up near this good...Thanks, Lisa....I've always admired your photgraphy skills, but it seems there's no end to your talents

Thanks :blush: just let me play around, then I'm happy

Glad you like it

 

[Charlie99]

I worked on it a bit and this is what came out.

Very much improved. Please post a short summary of what you did.

Seeing your version got me to try some other things. Basic edits like levels, curves, or repeated multiply blends worked much better after first either changing to greyscale mode, or first using luminosity blend mode onto 50% grey.