color correction - person is being filmed behind a light source

[tomchook]

Hello,
I filmed a person who is standing behind a light source, so he appears black. I have Adobe Premiere CS4 and VirtualDub. Is it possible to correct it with either of these programs? (something like "backlight correction" in Photoshop)

I would really appreciate if you would let me know exactly how to do it (I'm relatively new to these programs)

Thanks!

Tom

[guns1inger]

It is unlikely that you will get much detail back from such an extreme difference. You might try colormill for virtualdub (search the forums for links, there are plenty), but it really depends on whether or not you have anything in the video to play with. You may find you just have clipped blacks and no wriggle room.

[lordsmurf]

No. There is not way to correct hard overexposures or underexposures.

[Persistence]

If you video consists of people facing the camera with a sunset in the background, you may be better off not trying to correct the lighting. You would only blow out the sunset and yield some smudgy grey-green ogre faces. Some still cameras have a multi-bracketing tool, which one can use to create a high dynamic range effect. That may be introduced to consumer videocams some day, but not now.

Efforts to create a back-light adjustment can help, but not a lot, if the contrasts are somewhat less extreme.

[lordsmurf]

Video HDR --- that would be nice.
I can't stand still HDR, but video HDR could be nice.

[jagabo]

A gamma adjustment can bring out shadow detail if it's not completely black.