Trying to fix terrible wedding shots

[FelixTheCat]

My wife and I hired a friend to take our photos at our wedding. He is new to the business, and after viewing some of his shoots form other weddings we went with him. The good is the artistic direction of the photos are acceptable to good, the bad is they were not shot well. I myself have ventured into the realm of photography as a hobby and am new to terminologies and methods. I purchased a Canon 450D and a used copy of Lightroom 3. I have searched the internet for help on this issue but I guess I am too ignorant to solve it myself so I am asking for help.

I have noticed that the pictures he took were very washed out or dark. The coloring also lacks sufficient contrast. I thought I would tweak them out myself while learning Lightroom 3. After 20+ hours of editing and editing and more editing I finally managed to salvage most of the photos into what I think look great!

One problem....I didn't know about color space when I ventured into this, and now they look absolutely terrible no matter how I export them. I know that ProPhoto > Adobe1998 > sRGB. I have tried all three, and all three look awful when viewing them in any other program other than Lightroom 3 or my trial of Photoshop CS5.

I'm completely at a loss for what to do. I have tried to export them to Photoshop, and then export them out of CS5 without keeping the ProPhoto, and they look awful. I'm at my wits end and about to give up on our photos, especially since I understand most prints don't take ProPhoto. Please help me! (and my wife!)

[dliveleyphotography]

Send me a sample of one of the bad ones and I will see if I can offer any suggestions.

david@dliveleyphotography.com

[ldelacruz]

Sounds like they might be under exposed. Post a few examples here so we can take a look.

[Tom]

Did you get the RAW files or can you still get them?

[FelixTheCat]

Well I do have both the RAW and the JPEG. I worked for over 20 hours on the RAW in Lightroom 3. I can post both files. Which do you want?

I have done simple edits with Windows Photo Viewer, but they are not enough to get the pictures to quality that I desire. I have reached quality levels that I feel are acceptable to me in Lightroom 3, but they are in ProPhoto and no matter what file format or color space profile I export them to, they look terrible.

Thanks for your help!

P.S. - I am really looking for a way to keep my work and not go back and have to edit them all over again (there are about 350 shots).

[KenJulio]

If you're using LR, you can export the version to a jpg file. You'll want to share the RAW file as you'll have more flexibility in correcting any of the basic issues with the photograph.

The RAW file will be too large to post, either email the guys asking or post a JPG of it and they can get a clue what you're dealing with.

[Skydawg]

I'd like to give it a shot. If you use yousendit,
I can download an image.

John

[thaddeussmith]

i don't have a ton going on right now ..if you want to mail me a dvd of the images you want worked up, i can spend some time working on them and mail a dvd back to you.

[bburton]

"Rapidshare" is another online service for transfering very large files.

RapidShare AG, Cham, Switzerland

[FelixTheCat]

Here are some links.

Jpeg Export from LR : IMG_4581.cr2 - 4shared.com - online file sharing and storage - download
RAW Export from LR : IMG_4581.xmp - 4shared.com - online file sharing and storage - download
The RAW I exported as "original", don't know what that means really. I believe it included this following file which may be settings:
jpeg - 4shared.com - online file sharing and storage - download
Hopefully I did something right here so that you can see the difference when you open both up in Photoshop/LightRoom. It was successful for me, but only if I opened it up in one of those two programs. If it is for you, you will notices the faces look more natural and brighter.

Thanks so much guys, and TheDeusSmith, I may take you up on that, I will let you know soon.

[FelixTheCat]

Also for the record here is what I have:
Original JPEG exports by photographer, original RAW by photographer, and my RAW edits. I am planning on taking some photography classes this summer, and hopefully this will help me with my general ignorance.

[texpic]

Opened that CR2 file, it isn't very sharp. Adjusting the exposure is easy but the brighter it gets the more obvious the pic is a bit out of focus.

[surlynkid]

i also opened it in CS5. while it can be lightened up a lot with brightness, exposure and fill light, the shot is just clearly out of focus. it can be made better, but you will probably not be happy with the results. pretty small RAW, but then i saw it was shot with a 30D. here is just a quickie of lightening it up some.

[FelixTheCat]

Yeah, and it is especially obvious when you zoom in, even a little. These will work for smaller picture frames.
The picture you edited, was that the RAW or JPEG?

[Tom]

WB is still off in that pic.