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Auto brighten image in photoshop?
Doesn't matter why I want to do the following, just matters that I want to... I shoot a lot of photos in my photo studio, in one permanent setup I have old crappy studio lights installed. Not all the lights fire correctly when triggered all of the time. So sometimes the model's face under lit. Whereas most other photos look just fine. Is there some "logic" that I can figure out and apply to a photoshop action, so that it can batch through several hundred photos and have it automatically figure out which photos are under lit and apply a curve adjustments to brighten it? While I can change the lights, I don't want to. Yes I can just delete those particular bad photos, and I usually do. Right now I just want to see if I can use photoshop to fix it through automation. Thanks! Apr 29 19 08:07 am Link So you just want to brighten the model's face, or the whole picture? You can basically batch process in LR. Apr 29 19 08:50 am Link 63fotos wrote: Just the mode's face. Also I want the entire process automated without me having to go through and find which images are under lit. I think your suggestion would require me to manually figure it out and then apply adjustments with software. I want the software to look at all photos own its own and figure it out itself. Apr 29 19 09:22 am Link I don't think PhotoShop or any other program for that matter, has the ability to automatically grade each photo based on a global exposure, look for faces that are under exposed and then apply an adjustment layer to a specific luminosity level. That would be some serious computing and AI power to do that. Ultimately, time is money. If you are trying to avoid spending hours adjusting the luminosity of faces in many of your photos because your strobes are inconsistent, ask yourself how much money is that costing you? Buying new strobes is most likely the cheaper alternative. Apr 29 19 09:51 am Link Pre-Touch, rather than Re-Touch ! Do it right in the camera at the time of exposure, rather than hope you can 'save it in post'. Lighting is the key. Now . . . to answer your question . . . Yes, the possibility might exist of automatically finding the face in an image, and bringing it up to a certain level of density, but it to the best of my knowledge nothing is available to do that at this time, and it would be extremely expensive to write the code and bring it to market. I have on occasion had to deal with this problem on the rare instances of when a front strobe doesn't recycle fast enough and the model's face (or body) is slightly darker than on the other photos in that set. It required time to find and outline the face, make a new layer of that selection, play with the levels to match the face to the other images, then flatten the image, before moving on to the rest of the images. KM Apr 29 19 10:33 am Link Are you being paid for your photography and every image has a dollar value attached to it? If so, figure out why your lights are intermittent. Cords and connectors cause problems, batteries in transmitters cause problems. If the lights are just old and beat, replace them so every shot is lit correctly. I am a hobbyist so my perspective may be different but here goes. My first step ALWAYS is to select the best images. I don't care about the rest of them, they are dead weight and the sooner you get rid of them the better. I do a "first cut, second cut, third cut" process sometimes and leave some time in between cuts to do other things. The distance provides valuable perspective. The third cut is a small fraction of the images taken, there can be only one "best" although there could be several looks that have one best. If your exposures are all good then you can proceed quickly with the best images and stop wasting time processing photos that will always be less than optimal. If you cannot choose your best images then nothing you can do with Photoshop or lighting will ever help you much. Apr 29 19 11:30 am Link Thanks everyone for your input. Yes I agree that pre-touch is better than re-touch. I still don't want to buy new lights. So I'll deal with it until I one day I decide it is painful enough to buy new lights...haha Apr 29 19 02:10 pm Link https://www.dpreview.com/news/301885557 … technology *I did not read the article, only noticed the hints. Apr 29 19 09:42 pm Link Is it just one light that does it all the time or random? How many lights are you using? Apr 30 19 06:00 am Link Sounds like a trigger issue rather than a light issue. Apr 30 19 08:40 am Link LnN Studio wrote: No idea. I'm using 7 lights. All on low power on the ceiling. The reason is to spread the light around more evenly. No need for anyone to question why I'm using so many lights, that's my business. I *think* it is most likely the recycling time is too slow on some of those lights on how quickly I take each shot. Again no need for anyone to question how quickly I shoot. Apr 30 19 10:31 am Link beta wrote: Thanks I did see that article the other day and thought that was of a lot of interest to me. I haven't tried the newest update yet, but am keen to give it a test run to see how it works. Apr 30 19 10:37 am Link Shadow Dancer wrote: Other than if a photo is wildly out of focus, I tend to keep everything i shoot. Even if the exposure is off by alot many cameras are iso invariant now and by playing around might just make a really cool image. You also never know what people will ask for. Once a random image of the crowd before the start of a fashion show was used as the background on a double page spread, another time a shot of designers kneeling to lay the hem of model's dress flat, i wasn't even going to include but tossed in anyway became the cover of a bridal magazine. May 01 19 11:37 pm Link Ask yourself, what is it worth to you. Sensor saturation is the only way you can insure properly exposed files. In the studio in a controlled light setting you Should have enough to properly expose your subject at native ISOs. Once you start pushing your gain (raising ISO because of low strobe output you are introducing dirty files, what most people call Niose. No software in the world can fix that vs. what you can do with proper lighting exposures. I say spend the extra ten minutes on your lighting rather than hours on the computer... Photography literally means the study or capture of light... Learn it, Breath it, Do it! May 02 19 12:25 am Link Art Silva wrote: Great Advice for the OP, However . . . The word photography actually derives from the Greek photos ("light") and graphe ("drawing"). The term was coined by Hercules Florence, a French painter and inventor, who used it in his diary to describe the process. May 03 19 12:05 pm Link If your model is in approximately the same place for each shot, you can record a number of Actions and assign them to buttons. When you see the underexposed shot just hit Button A, B or C - to apply a small, medium large increase in a curves adjustment. The action would include a curves adjustment with a layer mask so the change is only applied to the general area where your model's face appears (use a relatively large feather), but once applied, you can move it around the image or re-size it to suit your image. That's about the best level of automation you'll probably get with photoshop I would think. May 06 19 12:35 pm Link No and why would you even think of working that way? Even if this automatic, magic action existed, it would be very unlikely to do anything close to a perfect job, because its not just about brightness, its about all the angles, ratios, shadows. How you control the light determines a large portion of the look of the photos. Why are you so reluctant to change the light? And why not, if there is a simple no fire situation, just retake the shot? Surely you can see it has not fired at the time? May 07 19 01:22 am Link poiter wrote: The 'old crappy' lights may be dangerous. They likely lack the safety features of more modern equipment. The possibility of a 'shocking' experience is more of an issue to me, then is inconsistent lighting, and the time and money it costs you. (Also, poor equipment like that is very bad feng shui.) May 14 19 05:36 pm Link |
