Photoshop Pros - Need Your Advice

[Loupey]

I have never before used PS for anything more than removing an occasional dust mark, minor color balances, or industrial cut-outs. Can anyone recommend how I might go about balancing out the following type of shot with mixed lighting (outdoor, incandescent, and fill flash).

I just can't get it to come alive. Any hints?

Oh, my version of PS is 5.0

[Spec A!]

In later versions of pshop you have greater control of highlights and shadows within the image drop down menu. That may do something for your shot, but I kinda doubt it. To my eyes you already have a good balance between the types of lighting. I understand your thinking it not being alive, because it looks rather plain/boring to me as well. I don't think any amount of pshopping will help liven it up. The only thing I feel would've helped would be having more drastic/extreme lighting at the time of exposure, or using a different focal length to acheive the feeling you want.

[Ronnoco]

Frankly there are too many problems with your shot. Photo judges would say it is too busy, with no strong centre of interest. To make matters worse the eye is drawn to the visual distractions at the top of the photo because that is where most of the lighting is and that leads to another problem. This shot also needs more light in the lower half of the photo to balance out the top. Underexposure is loss of detail and blending of darker coloured objects into the background, which is certainly visible here.

Ronnoco

[Loupey]

Thought I would come back to this in hopes that it may help others.

After buying the upgrade to CS2 a few weeks ago, my first redo was this project. After a short time of trial and error, I was able to make a drastic improvement over the original edit. I see areas that I would like to further correct (hot spots, color correction, shadow detail) in the future.

Both are from the same RAW file.

Both the interior designer and the carpenter who crafted the hand-made table were very happy with the work (both paid for several prints from this job ). I have been asked to return to this home to shoot other rooms that they designed/built.

[another view]

You're off to a good start! The modified version looks a little over-done to me, but you'll get more comfortable with PS with more use. Mostly, the colors are a bit saturated - adjusting it down a little might help. I do like the contrast adjustment though.

Two different light sources with very different color temperatures will always lead to bigger differences in an image than how your eye sees it. Incandescent and halogen is in the 2700-3100k range and daylight shade is probably closer to 8000k or higher. If it were me, I'd probably pick a white that was lit with the incandescent room light with the eyedropper in Photoshop's RAW converter.

I suppose you could adjust the blue saturation to lessen that effect (which looks fine to me) or do something a lot more complicated (which is beyond me!) if you really wanted it to look the same as the interior lighting. Like I'm getting at; sometimes less is more!

[SpeedingSphere]

do you have the raw to this? The adobe raw editor works wonders for lessening shadows and bringing out hidden detail, give that a shot, or if you want me to try, send the raw, I'd be happy to give it a shot.

**I just read the first post, I didnt see your finished or near finished pictures, those would have been about the best I could have managed, good job bringing up those details in the table base.