Ken, probably this might help.
Create a new layer, apply fill flash and try to move the opacity slider and choose between the two evils.
Leen
Ken, the graininess is problematic; you might try using the Blur tool selectively to reduce the grain in the worst areas of the image. The washout of the colors might be helped by a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer, which will allow you to increase the intensity of all the colors or selected color ranges. Unfortunately, the conditions you cite are not atypical of underexposed and/or overly contrasty images.
Chuck
You might try duplicating the image layer and changing the mode to Screen. Then adjust the opacity. This definitely helps with the darkness, but I’m not sure about the graininess. By the way, if after following my directions and the image is still dark, duplicate the image layer again.
As Chuck says noise in under exposed images can be a pain, especially with compact digicams with small sensors and higher numbers of megapixels. On my camera if I’ve used any ISO above 50, severe underexposure can be a disaster and I need to use some form of noise reduction before and/ or after trying to recover detail in the dark areas. Often the underexposure tends to be concentrated in the background and Chuck’s technique of blurring the darker areas helps. However if the main subject is severely under exposed then it can be very difficult.
One thing I’ve done is to duplicate the layer and blur quite heavily, and then erase (either manually or by masking using a grouped layer) the areas of detail so that broader non-detailed areas where the noise is more intrusive show as blurred. (if you are familiar with the trick of edge masking to just sharpen the edges, I use the same mask, inverted).
If you are on Windows then Neta Image and Noise ninja appear to be very effective noise reduction tools… On a Mac the public beta of Noise ninja is working very effectively for me and is pretty quick amd may be worth a look if you have a lot of noisy images to deal with.
Susan S.
