Harsh, overhead sunlight on a cloudless day makes portrait photography difficult unless you've equipped yourself with a reflector or a suitably tuned fill-flash. But even a flash can make spontaneous photography more difficult... and sometimes you're caught out, with the perfect image, except for those damn shadows.

Case in Point

A nice spontaneous shot, full of life and interest... but marred by hard shadows from the noonday sun.

Step 1: Siggy - Adjust Brightness

I want to bring the skin tones up just a little, because the average skintone is actually fairly dark -- this image is just slightly underexposed. I want a little more illumination to work with for the final shot. Looking at the image itself, and the histogram, I settled on Bright: 0.38 as adding just about the right amount of light to work with. Her eyes are a little clearer but still quite hidden, and the rest of the image seems more settled on a good level of brightness for the subject matter.

Step 2: Siggy - Find the Midpoint

I've moved the contrast slider to 0.8 or so and adjusted the midpoint slider so that the sunlit portion of her face is bright, and the shadow portion of her face is dark. This indicates that the contrast Midpoint is right on the boundary between sun and shade. In this image, at the brightness adjusted above, this turns out to be -0.47.

Step 3: Siggy - Slight Negative Contrast

This is the final image. I moved the contrast slider down below 0 slightly, until I found a good compromise between detail loss/murkiness and shadow/highlight fix. For this image and my eye, -0.17 seems about right. Use the Enabled checkbox, switching it off and on, to see the difference between the original and fixed image.

Analysis

What are we doing? Remember that Siggy provides two sliders to control contrast -- Contrast and Midpoint. Contrast, by definition, moves image tones either closer together (less contrast) or farther apart (more contrast). Siggy is unique in allowing you to choose exactly where in the tonal range you want your Contrast effect to be centered.

To fix raccoon eyes, then, we find the Midpoint between shadowed eyes and sunlit face, then decrease the contrast between these two tonal ranges. This raises the brightness of the eyes and lowers the brightness of the face, reducing the tonal distinction between them and lessening the severity of illumination.

Before & After

Raccoon Eyes Problem Image Info

Raccoon Eyes Fixed Info

The difference is subtle (and subtle retouching is best), but real, and especially apparent in larger sizes. Click each one to see a full screen blowup.

Notes

With whole image manipulation like this, you're never going to fool someone into thinking you shot with a reflector and fill light. However, you might be able to turn an intriguing shot that's a technical knockout two star into an album-worthy three star -- and that can give your client (or yourself) more memories for later. Try it!

Good luck!