In the last several months, I've had a number of times that I've shot photographs of people in less than ideal light or who have been moving. Some of these photos have been good, despite the less-than-perfect conditions. Some, not so much. Sometimes I've just had to let the photo go. But I've come up with a few tricks to "save" otherwise bad photos.
Here are three things you can try, depending on the photo and your mood.
1. Add an effect.
I took this photo of my husband at a 3-D movie in July in a dark movie theater.
The light is pretty good (all things considered), but because I was holding the camera and the shutter was open for a long time, Ed is fuzzy.
I liked the idea of the photo, but I wasn't happy with the fuzziness. So I used PhotoShop and added an effect. This is what I came up with.
I think the second photo looks a bit like those old photos of people in 3-D movies… and it works.
2. Make the photo black and white.
I took this photo at work, in a hurry, so I didn't have much time to fiddle with white balance, etc.
I love both of their expressions, but see how yellow they look? To try to salvage it, I made the photo black and white.
Black and white won't fix everything, but it's a good thing to try. I think it works well in this case.
3. Crop the image.
Recently, I was photographing a man with his birds at a festival. He was moving, and the bird was moving. I hit the shutter just a tad too late here.
It feels really unbalanced to me… So I cropped some of the stuff from the left side of the frame out. This was the result.
Naturally, there's nothing I can do to bring back the man's face… but I think this works much better.
What are some of your tips for fixing a photo that might otherwise go to the recycle bin?
If you have some before and after shots you'd like to share, I'd love to see them. Leave the link, and I'll stop by and see them.
Rebecca blogs at Ramblings by Reba. Come visit!
Loading ...
Great ideas! Another thing you could try for #2 is use the reduce color cast option in photoshop, although with the low lighting I still think the best option is the one you chose – B&W.
Great tips – love the first suggestion (have LOTS of photos like that!) but I think you were too hard on yourself with that bird photo. The cropped version looks better but I think the first shot was pretty darn good, too!
another couple of things you can do to fix photos is to bring up the exposure if they are too dark, You can adjust the color temp if they are off. Move the button towards the blue if they are yellow and to the yellow if they are blue.
Another thing I have done is apply "sketch" effects to slightly blurry photos. It works great. I will post some on my blog this week.
Good suggestions, especially the last one, as it's not something I would've immediately thought of!
Great tips, especially the b&w and cropping ones, I do it aaaaaall the time! LOL Another way to save a bad pic is to duplicate layers in Photoshop and play with the blending mode: "screen", for example, will enlighten an underexposed pic. This might seem an advanced trick, but just try and play with the settings, you can always undo things if you messed up! Oh, and Noiseware is a terrific tool to remove noise from the pix… and there's a free version! Yay!!