best way to 'correct' bad over-exposure in scanned photos?

[NTB]

Been working off and on for the last couple months to scan and clean up a bunch of old family photos. So far so good, for the most part, although I have come across a few that I'm not sure what to do with: ones where the camera's flash has nearly, if not completely obliterated the subject's face.

I know from experience with less-overblown photos - mostly those taken with my Canon XT & XTi DSLRs - that there is, or at least may be, *some* recoverable detail there...the question is, what's the best way to try and recover these details without destroying the rest of the photo? anybody have any suggestions? The only real 'tool' I have at my disposal is Corel's Paint Shop Pro 12. I did scan all of the photos in 48-bit color, so hopefully I've got some headroom to work with. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks!

Nathan

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Send one of the pics to the email addy I PMed you.

DO NOT convert it to an 8 bit jpeg. Send it however you saved it. That way I can see what you are working with and perhaps help you out.

 

[manko]

I would recommend working in layers and adjusting each region of exposure with levels to recover some of the detail and try to blend them back together into a normal range of exposure so the scene matches. You also may need to do some manual touch ups. Depending on your source you may not get it perfect, but you will probably see some improvement. Less is more when editing, you don't want to overdo it or it will look unnatural, so you may have to sacrifice some detail to get a reasonably normal looking shot.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I've done a little manipulating of the image you sent to me. It's better I think, but it may not be what you hoped for. You'll find it in your email

Here's the basic problem:

When you scan a negative you have about 8 stops of light range that can be recorded as an image, but that's not what we're working with. We are working with the dynamic range of roughly 3.5 stops. This is due to a number of reasons, but pretty much it comes down to the difference between the whitest area that can be printed vs the darkest.

In this case the overexposed parts are mostly bare white paper. Now there was some detail and I was able to bring it out, but the physics of the situation limits what can be done. You can't bring back detail that does not exist in the image.

Still, I think it's an improvement and I'm always the harshest judge of my work.

Let me know what you think.

 

[rivan]

If it's possible that you're losing some of the detail while scanning (i.e. there's detail that exists in your negative that's not showing up in your final scan) you may be able to get better results by taking more than one scan of each negative and compositing them.

To do this, mount your image and preview the scan. There's probably a brightness control in your scanning application - you may have to dig for it or turn off "auto" mode. It may be called something else - exposure possibly.

Scan once at reduced brightness (better detail preservation for the highlights), once at middle brightness (for a baseline), and once on high brightness (increased shadow detail).

I don't know Paint Shop Pro anymore, but I'd expect you'll still be able to use each scan as a layer and composite them together. I'd be happy to composite a set of scans for you (in Photoshop - all I use) to see what's possible. Feel free to PM.