Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: Stoic on December 24, 2023, 04:30:29 pm

Title: Retouching - saving a pet photo (crushed shadows or blown highlights)
Post by: Stoic on December 24, 2023, 04:30:29 pm

Hi All, I'm doing some retouching of old 'pet' photos. Frequently I'm finding say there's a black dog or a white cat, and parts of either the black fur is solid black, or the white fur is blown out completely white.

Can anyone either advise or point me to a source that shows a Photoshop technique how to add in some lost fur texture.

I'm sure it's easy when you know how  ::)

Thanks!

Title: Re: Retouching - saving a pet photo (crushed shadows or blown highlights)
Post by: digitaldog on December 24, 2023, 04:40:00 pm

The original you have is raw (or rendered data like a JPEG/TIFF)?

Title: Re: Retouching - saving a pet photo (crushed shadows or blown highlights)
Post by: Peano on December 25, 2023, 11:06:13 am

Quote from: Stoic on December 24, 2023, 04:30:29 pm

Hi All, I'm doing some retouching of old 'pet' photos. Frequently I'm finding say there's a black dog or a white cat, and parts of either the black fur is solid black, or the white fur is blown out completely white.

Can anyone either advise or point me to a source that shows a Photoshop technique how to add in some lost fur texture.

I'm sure it's easy when you know how  ::)

Thanks!

Hard to tell without seeing the photos, but Generative Fill might work. Below is an example of what it can do. If you don't have raw files, that might be your only recourse.

Title: Re: Retouching - saving a pet photo (crushed shadows or blown highlights)
Post by: dgberg on January 06, 2024, 01:22:54 pm

Quote from: Stoic on December 24, 2023, 04:30:29 pm

Hi All, I'm doing some retouching of old 'pet' photos. Frequently I'm finding say there's a black dog or a white cat, and parts of either the black fur is solid black, or the white fur is blown out completely white.

Can anyone either advise or point me to a source that shows a Photoshop technique how to add in some lost fur texture.

I'm sure it's easy when you know how  ::)

Thanks!

In Lightroom it is real easy. Maybe 10 seconds for all.
Texture-Slide texture to the + side
Blocked shadows-Slide shadows to the + side
Blown out-Slide whites or highlights to the -

Title: Re: Retouching - saving a pet photo (crushed shadows or blown highlights)
Post by: Peano on January 07, 2024, 09:27:48 am

Quote from: dgberg on January 06, 2024, 01:22:54 pm

In Lightroom it is real easy. Maybe 10 seconds for all.
Texture-Slide texture to the + side Blocked shadows-Slide shadows to the + side
Blown out-Slide whites or highlights to the -

The OP (apparently no longer with us) said "parts of either the black fur is solid black, or the white fur is blown out completely white." If he's working with jpegs, those areas contain no image data, so there's nothing Lightroom could recover from them.

Title: Re: Retouching - saving a pet photo (crushed shadows or blown highlights)
Post by: digitaldog on January 07, 2024, 10:25:07 am

Exactly (and why I asked); LR can't magically fix data that doesn't exist (blown highlights/shadows).
GIGO: garbage in, garbage out.