# Need help with fixing overexposed red/pink shirt in a portrait.



## julianliu (Oct 11, 2015)

Today I did a photoshoot of a twins. I was excited about the photos until I looked at several pictures of one girl wearing a red/pink shirt on my computer screen. The face was not over exposed but the red/pink shirt was! I lowered the exposure by one and half stops in LR and it still looks bad, so I just keep the original exposure I shoot. I like the lighting on her face and her expression so I do not want to throw the picture away.
What does it look it? It is bad? How to fix it?


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## tirediron (Oct 11, 2015)

Export as  .tif/.dng, open in PS, select the area, and create a levels or curved adjustment layer from the selection and deal with it.


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## frommrstomommy (Oct 11, 2015)

I would try to handle it in lightroom some. Selective brush work and bring down saturation exposure and play with the other sliders as well.


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## jaomul (Oct 11, 2015)

Is it overexposed or just very vibrant. I think the exposure looks good for the photo. I may try dropping vibrancy a little as this should not effect skin tones to much


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## frommrstomommy (Oct 11, 2015)

I used a brush with automask on and -0.36 exp, -4 highlights, -4 saturation and it calmed it down a little bit


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## frommrstomommy (Oct 11, 2015)

Also, I almost always recommend against bright reds/oranges for outfits when people ask me. lol I also say no neons because they tend to reflect on faces as you have beneath her chin.


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## Braineack (Oct 11, 2015)

looks fine to me.


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## Ysarex (Oct 11, 2015)

julianliu said:


> Today I did a photoshoot of a twins. I was excited about the photos until I looked at several pictures of one girl wearing a red/pink shirt on my computer screen. The face was not over exposed but the red/pink shirt was! I lowered the exposure by one and half stops in LR and it still looks bad, so I just keep the original exposure I shoot. I like the lighting on her face and her expression so I do not want to throw the picture away.
> What does it look it? It is bad? How to fix it?
> View attachment 109654



Yes it looks bad or at least it would look better without the error. Here's what's wrong: The red channel is nuked:



 

The green and blue channels are fine and the exposure overall is fine. Looking at your EXIF data it appears that you processed a camera JPEG through LR which leads me to assume this error was introduced by the camera JPEG processor.

How to fix? Don't do it in the first place which brings me to the question do you have an NEF file? This error would be easy to avoid when processing the raw NEF file. You wouldn't create the error in the first place and you'd have nothing to fix.

The damage in the case of this JPEG is done and so you can't "fix" it you can repair it. It's a subtle distinction but an important one. If you break a vase and glue it back together you're going to see the break lines and the glue job.

If a repair is your only option then what you need to do in this case is adjust the red channel separate from the other two. Since the other two channels still have detail in the areas where the red channel is blown the repair will work pretty well.

But first: Do you have an NEF file?

Joe


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## julianliu (Oct 11, 2015)

frommrstomommy said:


> I used a brush with automask on and -0.36 exp, -4 highlights, -4 saturation and it calmed it down a little bitView attachment 109667 View attachment 109668



That's good guidance about wardrobe selection for my next portrait project. Thanks a bunch. Regarding to your edited image, I do not think it's fixed, lol.  I think it's hard almost impossible to fix when damage is done.


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## Derrel (Oct 11, 2015)

Strong colored shirts and blouses in bright lighting conditions often reflect under the chin and on to the neck/chin area. But yeah...the red channel is nuked. I took the JPEG in to Lightroom and made some adjustments to the reds, and also then lowered the exposure .025 EV overall, and then burned down the face and much of the shirt .36 EV (should have burned down .50 EV or maybe even more I think).



I sacrificed the "red blouse" for a peach-type color of blouse and lipstick...that may not be acceptable to you, but hey, I wasn't there, so it looks okay to me to go with a different color.

As Ysarex is asking above...do you have a .NEF file to work on? The above image was already cooked...working on processed JPEG images is not a lot of fun, and in the case of nuked reds, is really a PITA, at least for me.


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## julianliu (Oct 11, 2015)

Ysarex said:


> julianliu said:
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> > Today I did a photoshoot of a twins. I was excited about the photos until I looked at several pictures of one girl wearing a red/pink shirt on my computer screen. The face was not over exposed but the red/pink shirt was! I lowered the exposure by one and half stops in LR and it still looks bad, so I just keep the original exposure I shoot. I like the lighting on her face and her expression so I do not want to throw the picture away.
> ...



I shot and edit NEF file only. So I do not know how you can get the idea from EXIF data that I processed JPEG. 

Yes, I know the red channel is nuked. I think the camera does not handle this color well or it is very sensitive to this red/pink color under flash light. 

I had to lower 4 stops exposure to make the blown out part of the shirt to look right, but of course the rest is way under exposed (see image below). So the information is there but just the way the camera or the software interpretes this information is wrong.   

The NEF file is saved on dropbox here (Dropbox - ZJL_5989.NEF) if you like to play with it to see whether you can get both the shirt and the rest of the image exposed correctly. I certainly appreciate your time and effort on this issue. 

Original exposure from camera:


 

Lowered exposure by 4 stops in LR:


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## julianliu (Oct 11, 2015)

Derrel said:


> Strong colored shirts and blouses in bright lighting conditions often reflect under the chin and on to the neck/chin area. But yeah...the red channel is nuked. I took the JPEG in to Lightroom and made some adjustments to the reds, and also then lowered the exposure .025 EV overall, and then burned down the face and much of the shirt .36 EV (should have burned down .50 EV or maybe even more I think).View attachment 109685
> 
> I sacrificed the "red blouse" for a peach-type color of blouse and lipstick...that may not be acceptable to you, but hey, I wasn't there, so it looks okay to me to go with a different color.
> 
> As Ysarex is asking above...do you have a .NEF file to work on? The above image was already cooked...working on processed JPEG images is not a lot of fun, and in the case of nuked reds, is really a PITA, at least for me.



Derrel, 

I hesitated to reduce the luminance/saturation/hue of the shirt because it looks different to me which I did not like. But after many tried, I could not see how it can be resolved any other way. So even though you edited photos has a total different look of shirt, I think it maybe the only option I have.
I think in this situation, I can blame the camera for it's incapability of handling such colors. Of course, we human should realize its disadvantage and find ways to make up for it. 
Thanks!

Julian


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## Ysarex (Oct 11, 2015)

julianliu said:


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I got to run right now to the local Columbus Day festival -- back this evening. I processed this quickly from your NEF. Is this what you were looking for?

Joe


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## julianliu (Oct 11, 2015)

Ysarex said:


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Thanks for editing. I think it's close. I feel the rest of the image is desaturated a little bit though. What did you do?


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## jaomul (Oct 11, 2015)

I still think your original posted edit looks the most natural. The shirt is less red than you'd like, but the picture looks most natural here.I didn't know it should be more red until I read it on your post


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## Derrel (Oct 11, 2015)

See how EASY it is to edit to correct a major image flaw from the .NEF file as compared to a JPEG image?


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## FITBMX (Oct 11, 2015)

You got a lot of great help on this!


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## Ysarex (Oct 11, 2015)

julianliu said:


> Thanks for editing. I think it's close. I feel the rest of the image is desaturated a little bit though. What did you do?



Sorry I had to go out. I only had time before to do quick run through to get the shirt. Never have seen the shirt so I'm still doing some guessing but I have an idea what's going on. Highly saturated red is a problem. It's not a problem for the sensor and I looked at your raw file just now and it's fine. Highly saturated red is a problem for a lot of processing software.

Sorry about my earlier assumption that you had been shooting JPEG, I missed a tag in your EXIF data.

So I just spent a little more time with the photo and came up with this:






You're using LR so I did also. I couldn't get LR to give me that shirt the way I wanted it. I had to settle for a little lighter and less saturated. The idea is to use the HSL panel and adjust the saturation and luminosity of the reds in the shirt. LR isn't discriminating enough and I had to settle for less but most importantly I made sure the reds were not clipped as I passed the photo to PS. Clipping is data loss and it's real hard to recover from data loss.

In PS it was easy enough to use Color Range to select the shirt, use the selection to create a mask, and apply a multiply blend between the background layer and a dupe layer -- adjust the layer opacity to taste. I'm guessing it was a very very red shirt. I run into the same problem all the time with my wife's roses.

I'm not a big fan of heavy skin smoothing but since you did some I went ahead and did some as well -- mostly to tone down the glare. I overdid it but it's late and it's been a long day and the shirt was the problem anyway so I'm calling it a night.

Joe


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## julianliu (Oct 12, 2015)

Ysarex said:


> julianliu said:
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> > Thanks for editing. I think it's close. I feel the rest of the image is desaturated a little bit though. What did you do?
> ...


Thanks, Joe. 

The shirt does look much more pleasing. Good job!
It's a learning experience for me. But for this phtoshoot, I have too many photos have this the shirt in them I will just leave them as they are. But good lessons learned from it. 

Julian


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## julianliu (Oct 12, 2015)

FITBMX said:


> You got a lot of great help on this!



Yes and I appreciate it. 

I think this is a good example for people to realize they can easily overexpose red shirt and learn from my mistakes later during their shoot.


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## Braineack (Oct 13, 2015)

@Derrel edit looks best here, but now she needs a bit more color in her face.  Other than his, i still prefer the original over all the other edits.


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## Ysarex (Oct 13, 2015)

julianliu said:


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This isn't going to help your immediate situation, but I think it's worth noting for general reference. Making that run out to Photoshop and back is a complication that very understandably is too much grief especially if you have a large number of photos to process. So it's an irritant that LR can't do better.

We live in an Adobe-centric world and if LR can't deliver then that pretty much settles that. So I popped that NEF over to Capture One which has much more sophisticated color control than LR and I was able to get this directly in C1 without the need to run over to PS and back:



 

Not doing any more skin re-touch -- just a raw conversion for the basic tone and color and the shirt. Point being that C1 can handle the shirt without having to rely on PS.

Joe


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## FITBMX (Oct 13, 2015)

julianliu said:


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I am new to portrait work, and had not thought of this. So I enjoyed reading this, I learned a lot.


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## Ysarex (Oct 13, 2015)

julianliu said:


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You didn't overexpose the red shirt. In fact you could have benefited from another 1/2 stop of additional exposure. Your exposure was good to a little under.

Joe


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## julianliu (Oct 20, 2015)

Ysarex said:


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I like the red shirt in your version. Looks like Capture one is pretty good and I should give it a try.


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