Fixing Photos Where You Wish You Hadn t Used Flash

Fixing Photos Where You Wish You Hadn't Used Flash

There's a natural tendency for people to react to their immediate surroundings, rather than what they see through the lens. For example, if you're shooting an indoor concert, there are often hundreds of lights illuminating the stage. However, some photographers think it's one light shorttheir flashbecause it's dark where they're sitting. So when you look at your photos later, you see that your flash lit everyone in front of you, ruining an otherwise great shot. Here's a quick fix to make it look as if your flash never fired at all:

Step One

Open a photo where shooting with the flash ruined part of the image (like the image shown here taken at Walt Disney World in Florida. The castle is beautifully lit, and that's all we want to see, not the tourists, although I'm sure they're perfectly nice people). Press L to get the Lasso tool and click-and-drag a selection around the part of shot ruined by the flash (in this case, the crowd on the street, who got lit by an inadvertent firing of the flash).

Step Two

Now we're going to darken this selected area, but we don't want our adjustment to appear obvious. We'll need to soften the edges of our selection quite a bit so our adjustment blends in smoothly with the rest of the photo. To do this, go under the Select menu and choose Feather. When the Feather Selection dialog appears, enter 25 pixels to soften the selection edge. (By the way, 25 pixels is just my guess for how much this particular selection might need. The rule of thumb is the higher the resolution of the image, the more feathering you'll need.)

Step Three

It will help you make a better adjustment if you hide the selection border (we call it "the marching ants") from view. We don't want to deselectwe want our selection to remain intact but without the annoying border, so press Command-H (PC: Control-H) to hide the selection border. Now, press Command-L (PC: Control-L) to bring up the Levels dialog. At the bottom of the dialog, drag the highlight Output Levels slider to the left to darken your selected area. Because you've hidden the selection border, it should be very easy to match the surroundings of your photo by just dragging this slider to the left. Now you can press Command-D (PC: Control-D) to deselect, and then admire the final image.