Hi. I've skimmed through the forums and have not found quite the advice I need...

Recently, one of my dogs lost a fight with one of my cats, and I had to bandage up his ear. He looked so pathetic, I grabbed the camera, sans external flash, and snapped his picture. The built-in flash, at this close proximity, cast a dark shadow from the lens onto his nose and over-exposed vast areas of white:

http://melissallany.com/images/90.jpg This is scaled to 75% of original size and saved at "10" jpeg compression, so it's still a fairly large file. (Btw, if you choose to look around my site, please know that I haven't updated it in a long time, and all the design/color elements get credited to my brother-in-law.)

This combination of over- and under-exposure in the same pic is a common problem with my spontaneous photos of likely-to-move indoor subjects taken with my dslr, and I haven't been able to fix or even improve these errors. I do still have a lot of experiementing to do in PhotoShop; but advice and guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks...

I dont really have any experience with this particular problem, but see if this is any better.

how's this?

That is a bit better for his nose; thank you. What did you do, and how did you do that so smoothly? I had even tried copying areas into new layers, but I couldn't get rid of the fringing from my tinkering. I'd like to get his over-exposed bandage and shoulders to be less blown-out, too...

That first reply is for Mason. This one is for Jackal. Thank you, too. Same questions: what did you do? The only problem now is that his bandage and shoulder look a bit "dirty," although they are definitely not day-glow white any more.

I have a seamingly obvious question...

why not just RETAKE the photo?

In any case, here's my 5 minute attempt...

try a more powerfull flash

LMS (laughing myself silly) splodge!

He's a Boston terrier, dewking. He's spring loaded! You have no idea how unusual it is for him to lie still like that, especially when I'm paying any attention to him, even with the camera. LOL

a little photoshop gigery pokery

Wow; great! I see four different results so far...maybe it's just a matter of "degree" rather then dfferent methods, but can anyone please tell me what you did? Or do I need to link to every single one of my multi-exposure-error pics to get them fixed for me?

umm splodge...

thats my version.

Caf... i can send you the PSD if you like... just need to know what version you have.

no it's not dew, it's a lot lighter, i took floorboards
that were not in shadow, layered them under the
original and erased the original back with a
15% airprush ereser, cut out the dogs snout/muzle
lightened it, brightened it, sharpened it, but it behind
the original and started erasing the original again

Yes, I can the difference in degree of lighter-ness () between dewking's and splonge's edits. Thank you both for your input!

Thanks for your offer, dewking, but without the history, the step-by-step process, I'd stll be clueless.
(I'm pretty clueless anyway. You might just tell me that there's a way to save all your "history" in PS
for future reference?! )
What method(s) did you use?




Wow, splonge, that's a totally different angle than I had tried before! Thank you so much for posting it!
I can really see (literally!) how your method would produce far smoother blending than my playing with
light/bright/hue/saturation of different sections "period." Well, I did try layers, but I obviously didn't
fade/erase the right ones the right way.

Any suggestions on pulling out more detail in the over-bright ear and shoulder? Is that possible?