Dennis Lee Bieber wrote: > On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:27:47 -0500, singhals <singhals@erols.com> > declaimed the following in soc.genealogy.computing: > > > >>Birthday6 is the cake picture and the one I'm most >>interested in getting cleaned up. The burning candles >>"flare" :( The flash failed to function at all. >> > > I don't think there is much that can be done for the flare... > Digital has an dynamic range similar to slide film -- narrower than the > range of negative film. > > I'm not an expert at Photoshop, but I can't really do anything with > that image -- among other matters, it is overly compressed, and any > adjustments start to show the JPEG compression artifacts. > > I can bring the shadows to true black, but that actually makes most > of the image much darker. There is NO detail in the area of the cake to > be brought out. I've tried both "levels" and "curves" > > >>Birthday15 would be nice to have, and is offered in case >>someone wants to try their hand there too. The flash was early. >> > > Still can't do anything with the blown out high-lights, but based on > both images, the camera is not capable of creating a true black (both > had the darkest pixels at about 33% up in the scale from black to > white). > > About 5 minutes with each, and the best I could come up with is: > > http://home.earthlink.net/~bieber.genealogy/birthday15.png > http://home.earthlink.net/~bieber.genealogy/birthday6.png > > (Even these are showing JPEG compression artifacts -- I can't believe > ANY camera does that much compression... did you recompress them for > posting?) Sorry! I didn't notice the file size, just picked the image names I recognized. The image directly from the camera card is now up. Cheryl