GIMP Version: 2.8.14
Operating System: Linux
GIMP Experience: Basic Level

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The old photo is quite clear but the person is in complete darkness. Please see attached photo.

Please advise how to fix the problem.

Thanks in advance.

Regards

Are you really using Gimp 2.8 ? You should update your version of linux.

However, my thoughts on what you might do and I did use Gimp 2.8.22 in linux

Caveat, never going to be great, too much colour info gone from the figure and without spending too much time on it.

First I would straighten up the whole image with the perspective tool.

Select the area of the figure, copy it and paste it as a new image.
Scale that image say, 400% it makes editing easier and might blur those hot pixels down.
Use the levels tool to select white point and black point. That at least gets you something you can see and you can (carefully) remove the background with the eraser tool.

Now scale that back down to almost original size, keep it a little larger, nobody will notice and it will cover the orginal with an overlap.

Copy and paste into the main image. It now becomes a bit artistic to try and clean up parts such as hands as best you can.

Hi@rich2005,

Thanks for your advice.

I'm running;
GIMP 2.10.30 installed on Ubuntu 22.04 linux

The photo was download on my website;

North California-2
http://phgallery1.reynoldstocks.com/north-california-2/

Under; Fort Bragg
The other photos are quite clear. I wonder whether it was caused by insufficient light while capturing ?

Regards

More than likely it is insufficient lighting. You can see he is in the shadow. Cameras will not catch everything our eyes can see.

Thanks

I do agree with your comment, face not having sufficient light.

Regards

I selected the human figure using the free select tool - Clearly the selection was very poorly done; (but here the intention was to test an idea).
With Curves, I lightened the selection and tried to apply a slight contrast.
I duplicated the layer with the selected figure, applied a mask of the selection and applied the mask.

With Colors - Exposure I tried to improve the lighting of the figure.
I used the Addition and soft light modes (from bottom to top) on the added layers.

Remembering that the selection part must be done well and not lazily like I did.

Hi@Wallace

Thanks for your help.

Regards

Hello Wallace!

I liked your result. I think the OP got the solution he wanted through the technique you used.

BTW, I didn't find this "color auto-normalize" plugin/script, or anything like it, even looking on G'MIC.
Could this be something added in more recent versions of Gimp? I still use version 2.10.28.

Would it be possible for you to share this plugin (auto-normalize) here on the forum? I would like to test it :-)

Wallace, thank you.

Hi@Wallace,

I'm running GIMP 2.10.30 on Ubuntu 22.04 (Linux) here. Please advise how to add plug-in-normalize? Thanks

Regards

Hi@Wallace,

Sorry, I couldn't make it here. When the face is clear the background (building) is not clear. Please see attached screenshot

Regards

@satimis, if you want the person to come out of the shadow and still have the building clear you have to select just the person first, then only they will be lightened.

Hi@sallyanne,

It is not easy to make sharp selection of the person. Is there any other solutions ?

Hi@Wallace,

Thanks for your help. It is NOT easy creating a smooth mask on a subject. It is time consuming.

Please advise what will be next steps followed. Thanks

Regards