Hi– I hope someone on this board can help me. My wedding photographer screwed up and produced some very low quality pictures many of which are unusable for a wedding album. I was able to get the digital files and am trying to fix them as best I can. The one I am having most trouble with is a picture of me walking down the aisle. It is very grainy and a little darker than it should be. I first tried putting it through Noiseware software which took care of a lot of the grain but the picture then looked very blurry and overall still low quality. I’ve attached a link to the pic below as it appeared before Noiseware. Anyone think they can work a little magic on it? Thanks so much in advance. This has been a complete nightmare.
Tab, This has paper grain texture pattern. Like something that was scanned off a semi-gloss printed photo, and scanned at a poor resolution at that. I seriously doubt this was an original digital file, or an appropriately scanned negative. At any rate, this photo isn’t a quick fix. If you hired a professional photographer this is unacceptable quality. Demand a corrected print. If the photographer is a blood relation or one of those deals, good luck with the cloning tool, color balance and and levels in Photoshop.
Do you mean,you have the original files straight out of the camera,or some downsized,jpgd,version? not sure if you can ever get a great print out of that shot, and i assume if he was stupid enough to shoot at iso 1600 for that shot,he probably left it there for the duration. i would love to see an original file posted just so i could look at the exif data to see how stupid he really was. i would love to see the camera, iso, resolution setting,etc. What baffles me is even if he used the highest iso available, i cant believe it would be that noisy,unless he also was on some low file quality setting.
I used to do weddings and things do happen, so i hope he is either not charging you, or trying to make it right. I would not go to court over this,unless he acts like everything is just fine. did you see samples of his work prior?, and what has he said. another thing that suprises me,is a photographer who gives the files to the client to correct. let me guess, he just got a new digital camera,and thought this was a great opportunity to learn it.
Not to beat a dead horse,but are you sure you were given the original unaltered files straight out of the camera. It might be possible this guy is terrible with photoshop,and screwed the files by applying to much sharpening or something. i am just trying to throw some ideas out there. the original files should have all the exif data with it.
I took a crack at it; the results are better but it will never be perfect given the quality of what you had to start with. If you want the result, go to www.lensjoy.com, click the button for the "contact" page, then email me. I’ll send it to you.
As you’ll see from my web site, I don’t do weddings.
Why not post it here,so anyone can learn what was accomplished,and how it was done as well. if you made that picture look good, hats off to you. i think the bride has left town.
The images I have are from a high resolution CD (300dpi) that I got from the processor. The photographer is not trying to make anything right. I finally got a letter from the photog so that I could deal directly with the processor but the photog himself is basically a thief and a liar. I did not hire him- my in laws did so I did not see any samples of his prior work. I don’t know what kind of camera he used or what settings he had on the camera. Any additional advice?
The images I have are from a high resolution CD (300dpi) that I got from the processor.
I understand that, but is that the photog’s final product or is that his "sample" or "proof" disk?
when i got married i got a stack of literally 100s of 4×6" prints (before cds became common for images) not great quality. we were to choose from these to select our package which – when produced – were 8×10 high res and great quality. we were also offered – for a fee, of course – to purchase the proofs, which we did. (legal points of copyright aside) i could scan the proofs and produce images, but even scanning at high res and printing on a decent printer (my kodak 1400) wouldn’t produce near the quality of the actual package prints the photog gave us because he wasn’t working from the proofs we saw, he was working from the original negatives. does that make sense?
I guess my question is, is he offering a higher quality product on a subset of the prints for an additional fee, or is that it?
Okay, there are some questions i have. are you in direct contact with this man or do you think someone else is going to care about your plight? You need to get straight answers from the person DIRECTLY,not from a friend of a friend. once you talk to him, ask him if you have access to the original digital images, before anything was done to them. there is a chance they are screwed up after the fact, but i cant say that without seeing the exif data, because thats what will tell you what the original file contains, such as iso,resolution settings etc. having this data will prove his poor skill. Checking with the processor is not the way to handle this.
I am not trying to give you false hope, but until you know the answer, you will just be left wondering what happened. having someone else get a photographer without you seeing the work first, leads to these situations. Has he seen these super noisy images, and does he think they are fine? if so,then a lawyer may be a smart alternative. there may be an argument for a couple shots being noisy,but the formals and standard shots should be very smooth. you cannot just be a helpless victim here. get some straight answers from him or get a lawyer to get your money back. At the very least save someone else from being subjected to this idiot. i hate to ask what he charged.
I am no longer in contact with this photographer because firstly, he does not do photography anymore (so nobody else will share my misfortune with him), and secondly because he is as I mentioned a liar and a thief who does not answer his phone or return phone calls. I thought about suing him but don’t think that will get me anything but more aggravation. Is there any way to tell whether the high res CD I got from the processor contains original files? Shouldn’t the processor know if they have original files?
From what you say, it sounds like wether he has the originals or not,you are not going to try to get them. was this even digital photography? If he lives in the same area,i would be a royal pain in his ass till he came through for you. i would approach him and say you are seriously considering legal counsel, and would like to know if he is willing to refund some money,or you are going to persue other avenues for satisfaction. he has no need for the originals if he is out of the business. were all the shots this bad? sometimes people think if they just ignore you, the problem will go away,and it seems his tactic is working. you need to decide how much you were really wronged, and what the right thing to do is. The only way to tell if your cd has the original info is to go to file- info and go to advanced-exif,and see if there is anything listed there like camera model,dates,aperture etc.
Being into the Wedding Photography business myself, actually my wife takes them, this sort of image is unacceptable and certainly some pro’s have been sued for less, however, this doesn’t help your situation. These photos have been taken with a cheap camera and the ISO setting at least 1600 introducing film grain.
This is almost impossible to remove but can be softened by duplicating the layer and applying blur>median filter to it, say about 3 pixels and change the blending option to screen @80%. Mask off you and your parents only and feather the resulting selection by 5 pixels, invert the selection and select your B/G layer, apply gaussian blur to about 20 pixels so as to blur the B/G people but just enough so you don’t appear to float off the image.
By blurring the B/G it gives the impression of depth of field and brings the foreground more into focus.
I used a different approach by cropping out some of the picture.
As it is based on PSCS I am not too sure that I have median blur but Filter > Noise > Median on all of the image followed by more of the same on targetted selections seemed to do some improvements.
I also used some special deebs trickery on other parts of the image
Thanks for all of the advice and help. I don’t know what else to say about this photographer. I certainly did not allow him to ignore me. I had to call him non-stop for a year before I got any proofs from the wedding and it took another full year to get that high res CD. I would love nothing more than to sue him but that won’t change the fact that these wedding pictures suck. Someone very smart told me "while trying to ruin his life make sure not to ruin your own." I just want to fix these pictures as best I can, make my album, and move on. I’ll never move passed this whole nightmare if I sue the guy. Frankly, I don’t think he has any money that I’d get from him anyway. If I could go back in time and insist my in-laws choose a different photographer (at least one I’d heard of) I would but I didn’t want to be a "bridezilla." Thanks for all of your help again.
Well, if it’s any consolation, that’s a gorgeous dress. Have you contacted the woman in white in the left portion of the frame, looks like a half decent camera in her hand? She may have got a better shot off. Since you’re putting an Album together as the finished product, and getting better photographs doesn’t seem to be much of a possibility, just wanted to mention that maybe some "scrap booking" techniques could help distract from the poor quality of the prints. Wedding borders, frames, all that stuff, from the local craft store. If done neatly and tastefully the embelishments can kind of shift focus away from the lack of focus in the photo, espcially personal items from the wedding, napkins, favors etc., become more momentos and family history, the quality of the photo becomes less important. If all else fails, get your dress back on, drag your husband and stuff him in a tux, and head for the nearest professional photographer. At least you’ll have a couple "really good" shots to offset the bad.
Wow, that’s pretty bad. My wedding’s photographer goofed majorly on our wedding and produced photos even worse than that. I’ve recently been spending time trying to fix what our photographer did wrong and have been having surprisingly decent results with some new techniques I’ve developed. However, the problem with extreme grain is that it often makes it nearly impossible to realistically guess at what’s missing. So many fine details get lost.
You would be surprised just how many "professional" photographers make this very mistake.
Thank you so much Heather! You just gave me my first smile of the day because I designed my wedding dress! I did have some pictures retaken with a different photographer so we have some nice formal portraits. For the shots of the day itself, including aisle pictures, I like your "scrap booking" idea.
Matt- I am so sorry that you had a bad experience but it’s reassuring that you’ve had decent results. I’m trying to learn photoshop and other software as best I can so that I can salvage some of this. I also just now made an appointment with the photographer that took our portrait retakes so maybe he’ll have some ideas. I wish you well in fixing your pictures and hope it works out for the best.
Is this picture actually the original file that he sent? Looks like it has been manipulated in Photoshop Elements, according to the EXIF data. If you have a higher resolution image, it could help (via noise profile for the camera used).
Sorry,this idiot put you through so much turmoil. he hopefully has taken his last shot for anybody. You are right to not make yourself sick over this wannabe, but i sure would like to see him get nailed somehow. good luck in whatever path you take from here.
Thanks so much Heather, Vito, and Donald. I truly appreciate all the comments and all the help. It’s nice to know that for every one bad seed out there, there are so many good ones.
Wow, that’s pretty bad. My wedding’s photographer goofed majorly on our wedding and produced photos even worse than that. I’ve recently been spending time trying to fix what our photographer did wrong and have been having surprisingly decent results with some new techniques I’ve developed. However, the problem with extreme grain is that it often makes it nearly impossible to realistically guess at what’s missing. So many fine details get lost.
You would be surprised just how many "professional" photographers make this very mistake.
You never know how many "friends" you have until they find out you are a photographer. I say this because my daughter is a professional photographer, and her co-workers are always trying to get her to do their weddings. One wedding in particular that she agreed to do was a nightmare, and she told the clients this. They didn’t care, they still wanted her to do it. The reason it was a nightmare was because the church prohibited any flashes during the ceremony…..the photographer (my daughter) had to stand in one pre-assigned spot to take all the pictures (the spot was in the rear of the church), and the only available light was whatever light came in through the blue stained glass windows. When my daughter scouted the church and found all these limitations, she informed her "friend" that the pictures were not going to be very good. Her "friend" and her friend’s mother said that they would be happy with whatever they got. Well, using a zoom lens with blue light results in really poor images. Using PhotoShop, my daughter spent countless hours trying to adjust the pictures to get them to look as good as they could. The clients told her they weren’t happy with them, and that she was a lousy photographer. These days, my daughter doesn’t do weddings.<g>
You should put together a collage/album for yourself of variations on the original photo that people here have created. Make the cover a version of the photo converted into a charcoal sketch.
You should put together a collage/album for yourself of variations on the original photo that people here have created. Make the cover a version of the photo converted into a charcoal sketch.
You should put together a collage/album for yourself of variations on the original photo that people here have created. Make the cover a version of the photo converted into a charcoal sketch.
Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.
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