Help! Save this photo!!

[lisaconrad]

I am excited to become an active member of a photography board. I have always wanted to in the past. I am in need of help today. This is why I have finally signed up and I am so glad I did. I have had a wonderful time reading so far. Very addicting. I love to learn.

I need to bring this photo back to life. I did this entire shoot with WAY TOO HIGH ISO. I will hopefully only make that mistake once. She still wants to try and print them though I advised against it. Does anyone know of anything I can do to make this possible to print in a large print? Maybe an artsy overlay or something? I am so desperate.

You can view the full resolution file by hovering your mouse over the photo and selecting from the size menu.

http://lisaconradphotography.smugmug...94224321_J8onA

Thank you so much.

[Frog]

I don't think its that bad. When viewing in full resolution some noise shows up in the background and maybe in his ear and on her cheeks but I doubt you want a print that big.
Some here use Noise Ninja but I've never used it.
What do you think is wrong with it?

[fx101]

O.K I hope you don't mind that I edited it. I took your image, and ran it through Vertus Fluid mask to seperate the subjects from the background. I then used Noise Ninja on the background only to proceed that with a "lens blur (8 diaph mid to low strength)" that would get rid of the plasticy NR feel. The background now has a nice bokeh to it and no noticable noise. For the subjects I applied noise ninja, ran a gaussian blur just enough to get rid of the high frequency (fine to medium) noise in the highlights and midtones and get rid of the plasticy NR feel. I then used Nik Sharpener (you can use photokit or unsharp mask) Display to get a lot of the detail back. I then used the blur tool in the shadow areas to get rid of the lurking coarse noise. Blur the skin following the lines and the hair slightly while following its flow, adjust contrast up to give it a little more "snap" and this should suffice for an 8x10. 16x24 would actually be acceptable: it's not going to be excellent though). Here's a crop from my edit. I can provide you the full .psd file. It's opposite the original.

[Medley]

Lisa, I need to know what size you're planning on printing this at. It makes a big difference in the amount of sharpening to apply.

- Joe U.

[Sushigaijin]

I agree it's not too bad - I'd be even more judicious with noise reduction than posted above. Noise is only important at the print level, so the first thing I would do is edit it normally (in layers) and then print it. If noise was a problem, I might apply some noise reduction to where I saw it most; usually the out of focus areas and dark shadows. For that, duplicate the background and use a layer mask to keep the detailed areas detailed.

This shot really has a lot of detail available, i'm not sure noise will be a problem in print. Keeping the sharpening under control will also help keep the noise down.

[AgingEyes]

It's just noise!

I think I see why she wants to have it printed: it's a good moment you captured there. I would print it, too, even with the noise (but it's just me).

fx101 did a good job on the image, but I tend to agree with Sushigaijin about the noise reduction and about the noise in the print.

If you use photoshop, you can try this to hide the color noise: duplicate the layer; gaussian blur the duplicated layer with a setting of 5. Then change the blending mode to "color". This hides the color noise. Then run it through some noise reduction program to reduce the luminance noise and that should do the job. Actually, you can open the file in Camera Raw, reduce the noise there and see if you like the result.

[lisaconrad]

I am amazed at all of the help I have received here! I should've joined sooner. I really appreciate ALL of the feedback. I will definitely be breaking these down and coming up with a solution. I may try to print it a few different ways and see what looks best.

Thank you all so much!