White Halo In Old Photo

Pedro wrote:

I have an older b&w photo of a girl in a white dress, but she has a white halo from her neck up and around the outside of her head that I’d like to eliminate. Does anyone have any ideas on how to reduce or eliminate this white halo? If you need me to post the photo, I’d be grateful if you would let me know how I can do that. Thanks.

I have basically the same problem. I have a picture where I am wearing a white shirt. It was a blasting sunny day. The shirt is completely over-exposed and "halos" into the background before. I am standing in front of John Lennon’s house, so I would really love to fix it up. I can post the picture if need be. Quite a few pictures turned out like that so I hope someone has some ideas for minimizing the effect.

Randy

Randy wrote:

Pedro wrote:

I have an older b&w photo of a girl in a white dress, but she has a white halo from her neck up and around the outside of her head that I’d like to eliminate. Does anyone have any ideas on how to reduce or eliminate this white halo? If you need me to post the photo, I’d be grateful if you would let me know how I can do that. Thanks.

I have basically the same problem. I have a picture where I am wearing a white shirt. It was a blasting sunny day. The shirt is completely over-exposed and "halos" into the background before. I am standing in front of John Lennon’s house, so I would really love to fix it up. I can post the picture if need be. Quite a few pictures turned out like that so I hope someone has some ideas for minimizing the effect.
Randy

Figures, found it after I posted. The freehand dodge tool works pretty good to darken areas like this. Anyone know of any better technique?

Randy wrote:

Randy wrote:

Pedro wrote:

I have an older b&w photo of a girl in a white dress, but she has a white halo from her neck up and around the outside of her head that I’d like to eliminate. Does anyone have any ideas on how to reduce or eliminate this white halo? If you need me to post the photo, I’d be grateful if you would let me know how I can do that. Thanks.

I have basically the same problem. I have a picture where I am wearing a white shirt. It was a blasting sunny day. The shirt is completely over-exposed and "halos" into the background before. I am standing in front of John Lennon’s house, so I would really love to fix it up. I can post the picture if need be. Quite a few pictures turned out like that so I hope someone has some ideas for minimizing the effect.
Randy

Figures, found it after I posted. The freehand dodge tool works pretty good to darken areas like this. Anyone know of any better technique?

umm … I mean BURN tool !

If the halo is the same size all around, select to the outside of the halo and save the selection. Then shrink the selection to the area of the figure (SELECT>MODIFY>CONTRACT) so the selected area is at the outline of the figure. You may have to experiment with how many pixels to contract the selection. When you have it to your satisfaction, save the selection into the same name you used for saving the original selection, but SUBTRACTING it from the original selection. Then load that selection into your picture. You can then use the clone stamp to darken the halo with information from outside the halo without affecting the figure. To get a smooth job you may have to experiment with feathering the final selection.

John Forest wrote:

If the halo is the same size all around, select to the outside of the halo and save the selection. Then shrink the selection to the area of the figure (SELECT>MODIFY>CONTRACT) so the selected area is at the outline of the figure. You may have to experiment with how many pixels to contract the selection. When you have it to your satisfaction, save the selection into the same name you used for saving the original selection, but SUBTRACTING it from the original selection. Then load that selection into your picture. You can then use the clone stamp to darken the halo with information from outside the halo without affecting the figure. To get a smooth job you may have to experiment with feathering the final selection.

Why so complicated? You do not have to select only the halo, it’s enough to select everything but the figure. So select the figure, invert the selection and start cloning.

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Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl