My vacation photos came out terrible? Please help me fix them?

Question

my wife and I took 80 digital pics with a HP 315 smartphoto (5 mp, 2 digital zoom, 0 optical zoom) camera. It turned outs that most of the pics were underexposed when we transfered them to the PC. They look JUST fine when previewing on the camera's display, but when we view them on the computer, browsers, Corel Paint Shop Pro, etc...most pics seems like we were standing in the dark. I played around with Corel and I'm not smart enough to figure out what to do with the gamma (red, blue, green), brightness, contrast, etc. Please help us salvage our vacation photos...once again, they are fine on the camera's preview screen, the PC is where they get messed up....I tried Corel paint shop pro and the auto fix utilities..they didn't help, although the brightness helped somewhat....thanks

Answer 1

you might want to try Picasa2. It's a free download from Google, and makes it pretty easy to adjust lighting and such.

No amount of post processing will be able to recover data that isn't there

good luck. And it sounds like it's time to buy a new camera.

Answer 2

First things first. Look up the basics of using the histogram and check to see if the image is really under exposed. If it's not, then your monitor needs adjusting. However, I'm guessing your right, the images are underexposed.

Before you do anything else, try this. It's for photoshop, but you can do the same in Paintshop Pro. Open your image, and duplicate it as a separate image. That way your original won't be at risk.

Duplicate the image as a layer and set the mode of the duplicate layer to 'Screen' and leave the transparency at 100%. This will give you the equivalent of about 1 stop more exposure. Merge the two layers into one.

If you need to do it again, repeat the process. If it seems too much the second time, you can adjust the transparency to 25%, 50%, or 75% which will be the equivalent to 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 stops more exposure.

This is basically a salvage job, but the technique works. You can play with other corrections, like auto correction or fix image afterwards.

I will not ordinarily do this, but you can contact me directly and I will see what I can do with ONE picture so that you can do the same with the rest.

[e-mail]

Answer 3

Well...you are better off if the pics are under-exposed rather than overexposed. You probably still have usable data in the photos you can bring back with software.

Adobe Photoshop Elements & Picasa are both good programs to do this. It requires that you learn a little bit about brightness, contrast, etc. but the time you spend is well worth it because you will be able to improve every photo you take from now on.

I suggest not using the autofix...it produces weird looking unnatural results in situations such as yours. The "levels" command is the best one or you can alos use brightness & contrast to adjust--but the results won't be quite as good.

You should also try to figure out why the camera underexposed your photos before shooting any more important photos so you won't be faced with this dilema again. Your camera could be defective but check the ev setting if your camera has one. Try setting it at 0 and see how your pics come out. You can adjust it up or down until you get the correct exposure.

Answer 4

They say beauty is in the eye of beholder. The brightness of your pictures depend on the the picture viewer device. It seems your monitor needs to be calibrated. Your monitor need to be calibrated. There are various software to this do this job and the cost between $145- $300+. However, Corel seems has color and gamma calibration. You can do it without any difficulty.
Follow the instruction below.
http://www.unleash.com/mikec/color/
Additional link:
http://www.airliners.net/discussions/aviation_photography/print.main?id=6389
If it does not work burn a CD and go to Costco or photo lab I would not go some photo stores because the output is not good.

Answer 5

Try opening them at WalMart or Target, etc. It might be your computer that's messed up. Or, you can try Photoshop Elements "auto smart fix" or "auto levels". Just go here http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin/tryout.html and click "Download Now" for a 30-day free trial.

Answer 6

Before you do anything else, run a monitor calibrator on your monitor. The pics might be just fine.

And if you do need to tweak them, the monitor must be calibrated first to ensure you are not ruining the pics!

Answer 7

Try downloading the photos on another computer. If the cameras LCD is showing them as properly exposed it might be your computer. DLH

Answer 8

try playing around with the gamma on your monitor itself.
try looking at them on a different monitor or computer.

or try sending them to a local techy and see what he can do.

hope you can save 95% of what you got.

Answer 9

Here is an excellent site with some wonderful options for you.

Answer 10

try a photoshop program like adobe its kinda expenisive but it will savage your photos and it works great!