Post processing out smoke?

That's hard when the light is colored like that... If it would have basic "warm spots"-lighting, I'd try the following steps (basically drasticly increase contrast:
1. Add a saturation adjustment layer and remove all saturation (-100)
2. Add a curves layer and adjust the contrast of the picture with heavy S-type of curve (you're adjusting what now looks like a BW picture
3. Go back to saturation adjustment layer and add saturation slowly.

I think that may not work as well for this sort of picture with a strong color cast, though. I personally would try to make a B&W picture out of this, but I don't know if that's your thing, can't remeber seeing BW pictures from you before...

I'll give it a go when I have time, if it is ok that I post my version.

If you wouldn't mind posting a CR2 file somewhere, that might help to give it a try...

Alternatively, you could try duplicating the layer, and add a USM of about 20%, radius 150 or so. Set the blending mode of the USM layer to "Luminosity' to avoid the colors getting oversaturated.

You could also try to do a CR2 conversion to maximise contrast/detail in the face (never mind the color, so set the WB to maximise detail, even if he turns pink ;)). Then put that layer on top, Luminosity blend as well, mask off where you want.

Most info now seems to be in the blue channel, some in the red, nada in the green...

I tried on your jpg, and a combination of the USM layer, and a masked channel mixer adjustment layer (luminosity blend as well) brings out the face more. : Red channel: R=80; G=0; B=20. Green channel: R=10; G=60; B=30.
I also added a copy of the blue channel with a grouped curves adjustment layer (strong 'S' curve) on top of the entire layered file, opacity something like 10%, luminosity blend again.

It does affect the color a bit, but I don't mind.

(Biggest color change will probabely be because I converted to sRGB before posting, snce the image was AdobeRGB)

No idea how well it would work on a high res image, since the jpg you posted is pretty compressed...

Click to get the psd file...

I agree with René, the image can be recovered a lot but this posted JPG gives very limited start point to process further.

Adjusting levels and curves on individual channels and hue and saturation on individual colours gives a good starting point. For further adjustment making more radical adjustments on separate layers and masking them will higlight chosen areas.

So yes, it is recoverable but RAW-file would be nice to begin with and describe the whole workflow.

blackshadow wrote:
Will try uploading a RAW copy in the next few days - unfortunately am only on dialup so will take forever.

Dialup still exists? Wow :D I feel for you :D

Rob

I only just discovered the group.
I guess your Image will not be a gem in the end. It seems like you lost a lot of detain in the dark aereas (even though with raw you will be able to recover some). Overall the image isn't too sharp in the first place and adjusting contrast even with curves will give you kind of a funky result. If the overall brightness would be better along with the sharpness issue you would be able to save it. other than that I would toss the pic.
but in order to get rid of the smoke you need to up the contrast and down the brightness. This can be done with a lot of different techniques.
Here is one of slayer that I managed to save. It is processed for print and not for web, so it might still be a bit dark.

I too had do do a lot of processing after that show (I'm lazy and don't really like to do it, as my tech dep. will go over it anyway and it can make things worse but it saved my butt on that assingment).

Try the Clarity filter in Lightroom 1.1

Might work.