Topic: Really sorry to have to ask this... but I need help. Now!

[zapsnaps]

Hi Gang

I shoot Polaroids. And film. On 120. Oh - and 5x4. But.... a friend ignored my puritanical pleas and asked my to shoot a wedding(!) on Saturday with his d***tal camera. You know - ones of those nice bridge jobs with the built-in flash. I put into auto mode (good place to start, right?), and to try & preserve some sort of FW integrity, switched to B&W 400 with a 'red filter' film tweak. All looked OK on the back of the camera, at the time. Now viewing them at my desk, some have really bad red-eye. In mono! Did I really take a colour snap and then the camera converted it to greyscale?

Two questions - how did it happen? And how can I fix it using Windows Office? (Yes, I can hear the chuckles from here). I've tried to used the auto red eye tool and it doesn't work, I guess because the programme is looking for a red eye, when in greyscale, I have a ghostly white eye, giving a pleasant sort of living dead effect. Did I mention it's on the bride?

I know I should have told my chum to buy a wedding photographer, but I did it as a favour and have managed to transform his beautiful daughter into a living corpse.

Any hints (other than you shouldn't have ever agreed to do this) would be hugely appreciated.

[gothamtomato]

Doesn't Photoshop have a fix for red eye?

I have only a limited knowledge of digital (I am learnign it slowly) but I believe the best practice is to always shoot RAW or RAW and jpeg, and convert to the look you want later. And built in flashes cause red eye in both digital and film. But you might be able to fix them in Photoshop. Windows Office I know nothing about. I steer clear of anything PC or microsoft.

[Pete_R]

Should be an easy fix with any half decent image editing program. All you're doing is changing the white centre of the eye to black. But Office???

There must be an editing program you can download for free, maybe as a trial, that would do this if you don't already have one.

[gsgary]

Download gimp its like a free photoshop

[jharr]

+1 for GIMP. I used this to edit entire wedding shoots. Red eye edits shouldn't take long.

[Urban Hafner]

Too bad this is not 1st April. This would have been perfect.  Sorry for being of not help with the actual problem whatsoever.

[ManuelL]

Hi, did you shoot in RAW or JPEG? If you have RAW files, you should have the full color information and should be able revert to color in a RAW editor. Then the red eye will be red, which may make it easier for the software to identify it (??)

Otherwise I can also recommend GIMP. If you know someone with Adobe Lightroom - that has also a red eye removal tool. (I never used it, so I can't tell how good it is).

[Late Developer]

Gimp's okay.  You could also go to the Adobe website and download the full-spec / trial version of Elements 12 or Lightroom 5. I've got 11 and 4 and use them all the time when post-processing scanned negatives.  You can get rid of dust, sharpen, alter contrast and brightness and generally improve the look of your photos - digital and film.

I'm not sure what camera you used but I'd always shoot RAW and large JPEG simultaneously.  That way, you can choose which version you want to use and in-camera B&W (unless you're using a Leica Monochrom) is ratty / needs tweaking from most cameras.

No more digi advice from me 

[Francois]

And there's also Picasa which is simply fantastic and free. It does remove red-eye.

Red-eye is always caused by the close proximity between the flash and the lens. Light bounces inside the eye and comes back out as bright red.

As a rule of thumb when doing B&W with a digicam, you take everything in color and then convert to B&W in post processing.

[gsgary]

Just checked Picasa has redeye removal, i used to use Picasa when i used to shoot events and print on site with a dyesub printer its not bad, you can develope 1 image and apply it to the rest, one of my set up at a dog show doing dog portraits
http://gsgary.smugmug.com/Competitions/Miscellaneous/i-Bbz9n47/0/XL/IMG_3258-XL.jpg
And 1 shot processed in Picasa
http://gsgary.smugmug.com/photos/i-XzM8S9p/0/XL/i-XzM8S9p-XL.jpg

[zapsnaps]

Hi all
Thanks for the info. I knew that I needed to shoot RAW but the card wasn't large enough to shoot the entire wedding and the evening reception in RAW. Grrrrrrr!

I have acquired a trail version of Photoshop. I have found the red-eye tool and I've drawn a square over the offending eye using the red eye tool, but nothing changes. I've pressed enter and that does nothing. Clearly I need to press one more thing for the magic to happen. Anybody have any ideas, please?

Many thanks

[gsgary]

Download picasa just for the red eye, im not sure how to use it in photoshop, you could use the clone tool pick a point with the colour you want and replace the red eye with the clone tool, i never get red eye so never have to use it 

[zapsnaps]

Hi gsgary: I've downloaded picasa and I can get the red eye tool to work for colour shots (taken by others!) but not on the b&w files taken by me. It's as if both PS & picasa think that red eye only occurs on colour shots and it refuses to alter B&W files. And this was really my question - how do I do this in B&W?

Thanks to all for the help so far

[gsgary]

I think you are going to have to clone in what you want, are you allowed to post one and I will have a go

[mcduff]

Can you clarify for me. I  assuming these are true greyscale images where the "redeye" is not red per se, but some sort of weird ghostly white? Is that the case? Also, are these true black and white images (with only a black channel) or are they colour images that are merely desaturated (with three channels for R G B)?

I would expect that if there is no colour info in the pics that the redeye tool will not likely work as I bet there is not enough info for it (it only has changes in darkness not colour). So likely you will need to do it by hand. The good news is that fixing bw stuff is easier than colour as you only have brightness to correct vs that and colour.

It may not hurt to post a portion of an image so folks can show you how to do it.* It should not be that hard but will be harder than clicking the red eye button.

*ideally I would post an image that is not the bride or if it is here just the top half of the head so pics of her are not flying about the web, or at least not until they look good. But a crop of the top half of the face should be enough for the pshop or gimp nerds to show you what to do.

[SLVR]

what's digital?

[gsgary]

what's digital?

All the photos you post on here are digital but originally film

[SLVR]

no I shoot film, not digital.

[gsgary]

Thats what they say when i post on other forums, it winds me up another thing i get is can i see the colour version 

[Francois]

I think you are going to have to clone in what you want, are you allowed to post one and I will have a go

You can always clone RayBans on everyone

There's got to be an easier way to do this than cloning. That will simply make people's eyes a black hole... not what you want.

You could use Gimp or photoshop to make a round selection on a separate layer, fill it with black and use the layer screen settings in something like darken mode to take out the white while adjusting the overall effect using transparency...

[mcduff]

There's got to be an easier way to do this than cloning...

Ya I would definitely avoid cloning as it will take forever and look cloned.

I got tired of waiting for a sample, haha, so I just grabbed one of the few shots I have with redeye. It really do not have to correct it that often because I avoid flash like the plague ;-)

Anyhow I really do not use the 'burn' tool a lot, but it is makes correcting this sort of thing really easy and FAST. I set the brush to quite soft and more or less the size of the pupil and leave the exposure at something like 50%, manipulate the midtones and in a few clicks you are done.



You could probably do better but i think this is the approach i would do (there is always at least 12 ways to do something but I thought I would toss this way out as an option). I usually try to do stuff as easy as possible and make it 'good enough.' Likely if you have a lot of closeups of the bride you will want to put more work into them then the photos where tipsy Uncle Joe's eyes look redder than the should 

[gsgary]

Burn tool works well when used on a soft light layer

[gsgary]

Ive just tried to shoot a photo of my partner to get red eye and failed i even got my very first digitla out (Canon 10D not used for about 6 years) only digital i have with on camera flash my others only half hot shoes

[mcduff]

Ive just tried to shoot a photo of my partner to get red eye and failed i even got my very first digitla out (Canon 10D not used for about 6 years) only digital i have with on camera flash my others only half hot shoes

Haha, partly due to my hate of flash, I had to scroll back in time to about 10 years ago to find a sample pic. I am pretty sure I was trying to avoid flash back then too, but I was using a lot of new fangled  digital P&S cameras at the time and was probably occasionally forgetting to turn the flash off.

[zapsnaps]

Hi

Thanks, all, for the advice, especially mcduff - that's exactly what I got, so I hope that's how I can fix it!

Sorry about rather dropping this thread, but I've been away on business - to lovely Stockholm. Sadly no time on this trip to go to the old town with a proper camera, but I may have taken a few snaps along the way with a pocket P&S.

[LT]

Blimey. I really have taken my eye off the ball.

You have all let the forum down, you've let me down, and lost importantly, you've let yourselves down.

I am so hurt by this betrayal.

 

[LT]

PS I hope you managed to sort the problems out

[SLVR]

All throughout seeing this thread all I could think about was WWLD (what would leon do)

[mcduff]

Haha tintin. Tho I think even film images can suffer from red eye  - we can just gloss over where the pics came from :-)

[zapsnaps]

Leon: Don't worry - I do not intend on doing another wedding. I dont have that many mates.

Oh - and I shall be taking the Blad to the divorce hearings. I understand that for many (pre-d*****l) years, Blads were the choice of divorce photographers.

[02Pilot]

Leon: Don't worry - I do not intend on doing another wedding. I dont have that many mates.

Oh - and I shall be taking the Blad to the divorce hearings. I understand that for many (pre-d*****l) years, Blads were the choice of divorce photographers.

I never considered the idea of offering divorce photography services. Can you charge more? I'd think so - most divorcees seem to want to remember the split and forget the rest, and anything that lets them spend money beforehand so their ex can't have it would likely be quite popular ("Your Honor, I can't possibly afford that much alimony. Do you have any idea how much the wall-sized prints of today's proceedings are costing me?). Maybe one could offer a "Good Riddance" package that includes burning the wedding photos and ritually cleansing the house. Certainly you'd need a big security deposit for potential damage if chairs start flying during the hearing, but if you could catch one of those in flight, wow, what a memory for your client. So many untapped possibilities....

[Francois]

And the good thing with 120 is that it's big enough to split the negs in half without loosing much quality