un-illuminated flash area...
 

Could anyone offer any advice on whether it is possible to brighten part of an image where the flash hasn't illiminated?

I took over 50 photos at a Presentation evening using the cameras built in flash, with the camera (Nikon D50) on a tripod. I'm not generally a 'people' photographer and rarely use flash. I only had a few seconds between each award for the shots so i just had a quick check of each image before i took the next one. Not every pic is like this incidentally :)

[URL="http://www.photoradar.com/photos/100823/stargazeruk55/unlit-area-from-flash"]http://www.photoradar.com/photos/100823/stargazeruk55/unlit-area-from-flash[/URL] - Please note that this is a conversion straight from RAW, no adjustments made....and i know its not straight lol

I have both Elements 6 and CS4 although i prefer to use Elements.

is it possible to rescue the image at all?

TIA

Martin

[IMG]http://www.photoradar.com/photos/100823/stargazeruk55/unlit-area-from-flash[/IMG]

First things first, buy yourself a good flashgun that can be adjusted to wide or telephoto. In a dark place take a shot of a blank wall then study the pool of light for different settings of the gun.

Apart from the obvious get a decent flash, which doesn't help this shot, you may be able to do something in ACR.

I don't know what options you have with ACR in Elements, but in CS4 go to the gradient adjustment brush and increase the exposure on the dark side of the image.

If you know it's not straight then why not straighten it up? When it's cropped you won't be able to see any areas which aren't illuminated. This is one way around using Photoshop to drag up the exposure in the dark areas which will produce some noisy & unattractive results, at least with a decent crop people won't notice. The problem with the D50 is it has a very low pixel count which doesn't lend it to heavy cropping, but as things are it's your best alternative.

Thank you for your replies :D I'm sorry i didn't get back to you earlier but i had a complete hard drive failure and spent ages recovering my files:(

I'll now be able to see if i can clean the images up....

Merry Crimble to you all.

Martin