Can Photoshop Experts Help Fix My Monkey Photo from Nicaragua?

[aychamo]

Hey guys;

I need a little bit of help. In January I went on a trip to Nicaragua to help with surgery for the people down there who can't afford surgery. Really a great thing we have going down there.

Anyway, I got this picture with me and a monkey, but the color in it is horrible. I was wondering if anyone who is really clever with photoshop could adjust the coloring so that this picture would come out ok? I would really appreciate it.

The link is:

http://www.aychamo.com/pics/bobmonkey.jpg

Thank you for any help you can offer.

 

[Evo]

Oooh, aychamo is cute!

Did you just need it lightened so you can see the monkey?

 

[honestrosewater]

Which one's the monkey? (Joking, of course, I just couldn't resist.)
Okay, now I feel bad since you're doing such great work. Are you with Doctors Without Borders?

 

[cronxeh]

Do we bill him or does he have an insurance

I actually tried photoshopping this monkey-Bob fusion, but my laptop just crashed, and I had to restart. Problem is that I can make you and the monkey well lit and balanced couloured, however the mountains in the back almost become transparent.

 

[Monique]

I tried it too, but I can't select particular areas to balance the contrast.. the monkey needs to less and aychamo needs more.

 

[aychamo]

Heya guys!

Thank you for your efforts. Yeah, I mainly want to be able to see me and the monkey. It's no biggie about the background. I like this picture cause it's like looking at a cousin, kind of :)

honestrosewaters, no, I am not with that group, although I get stuff from them asking for money. I go with an orthopedic surgeon. He gets money from the medical companies in the US and he uses it buy prothestics (knees and hips), and we go down there and do all the surgeries for the people. We do about 30 hips or knees in a week (that is a *lot* of surgery!). The surgeon has made over 10 trips, and I've attended 6 with him.

I actually have pictures online from our January trip, for anyone interested in seeing surgery pictures or Nicaragua pictures:

http://www.aychamo.com/gallery/2005%20Jan%20-%20Nicaragua/index.html

 

[so-crates]

I brightened up a little with The GIMP. You don't have anything better than a JPEG do you ? JPEGs drop a lot of color information especially when the pixels of similar color are packed closely together like they are in many photographs.

http://osf1.gmu.edu/~craphae1/bobmonkey2.jpg

 

[dduardo]

Here is the fixed up version done in the GIMP.

http://umsis.miami.edu/~dduardo/bobmonkey_normalized2.jpg

 

[aychamo]

Hey guys!

They look great. Thank you very much. Those are definitely printable.

I didn't know about the deficiencies of the JPEG format. I use an Olympus C-50. I will try to figure out a way for in the future to save as a different format than JPEG.

Thank you very much!
Aychamo

 

[Moonbear]

I played with it a bit, but can't do much about the monkey. Everything I do makes the monkey look worse, though you clean up really well. Would you like the monkey in blue or red? I can do that more easily than making it look right. Or crop out the monkey...the background scenery is still beautiful, and then you just look very pensive standing there with your hand to your chin staring up at something out of view of the camera. I'm going to try one more time by monkeying around with the monkey first, then the rest of the image. It might work out better.

 

[dduardo]

The reason the monkey is the grainest is because it was the darkest. Compressing the image with jpeg also doesn't help. What I did was use the lasso to select particular elements of the photograph based on their location and closeness in color. I then fiddled around with the levels to try and get it as sharp and least washed out as possible.

 

[Moonbear]

The reason the monkey is the grainest is because it was the darkest. Compressing the image with jpeg also doesn't help. What I did was use the lasso to select particular elements of the photograph based on their location and closeness in color. I then fiddled around with the levels to try and get it as sharp and least washed out as possible.

On one attempt, I was able to get a decent monkey, but then there was a clear line around it that created sort of a halo effect, where the sky and surrounding trees were brighter and less contrasted than my adjustments to the rest of the photo. I tried the lasso tool to get in closer to the monkey, but it seems if I elimate too much of the immediate surroundings, the color levels are harder to adjust, and I just keep winding up with a funny looking monkey. It doesn't seem the monkey was quite in focus either.