Correcting extreme lighting! Dark indoors bright outside.

[Frank Piechorowski]

Add one stop of light to an image in Photoshop.

There are times that we just wish we had opened up the camera one more stop. Maybe our shot is back lit. Maybe we just had the camera set wrong. What ever the reason, PS can help us add that extra stop.

Let look at this image. This is the Flea Market in the French Quarter Market in New Orleans. You can see that it was a VERY bright day out side by the blown highlights in the background, but yet our foreground is dark. A classic mucked up, back lit shot.
http://www.piechdesign.net/tutorial_img/1stop_starting_image.jpg

What I'd really like to do is add some light to this foreground to help bring this shot back in some form of balance.

1) First we'll duplicate our background layer. <ctrl><J> or drag the background layer onto the New Layer icon in the pallet.
2) Set the MODE of this new layer to "Screen"
3) Set the Opacity of this layer to 25%

Your layer pallet will look like this:
http://www.piechdesign.net/tutorial_img/1stop_pallet.jpg


Setting the mode to "Screen" will brighten the whole image. The opacity of 25% is pretty close to 1 stop.

Here is the image we end up will. Still not an award winner, but a real improvement.

http://www.piechdesign.net/tutorial_img/1stop_final_image.jpg

Note: If you need to add more then one stop of light to your image, Do this several times in succession. It's better to have 2 screen layers both at 25% then to have one screen layer at 50%.

This is the image with the above steps done 3 times...

http://www.piechdesign.net/tutorial_img/1stop_final_image_3.jpg

[Asher Kelman]

Frank,

Why not do this with curves? Anyway your procedure is simple. What about the outside now?
I suggest you add to this "mini-tutorial" how to do that.

Add to the original a multiply layer and blend the result of that to the result of your current adjustment for the inside of the scene.

Great post idea. Thanks,

Asher

[Frank Piechorowski]

Yep... we can work on that. The tough part with the outside is if the shooter has blown out the highlights... there is only so much you can get back.

I've done exactly what you say above (it's in another basic tutorial on Removing One Stop).

Yes. You could do something simular in curves. Especially if you do it in LAB mode. Like I said on one of the other threads... Photoshop gives you 1000 ways to do the same thing.

[Don Lashier]

Why not do this with curves?
It may not matter in this particular example, but the problem with doing EC with curves is the interaction with the film tonality curve. EC is best done in the raw converter - the equivalent curve in Photoshop (http://www.lashier.com/home.cfm?dir_cat=26469) is not a simple "pull up the center" curve.

- DL

[Sean DeMerchant]

Yep... we can work on that. The tough part with the outside is if the shooter has blown out the highlights... there is only so much you can get back.

Try Image->Adjustments->Shadow/Highlight with a Shadow Amount of 56%, Tonal Width 50%, and Radius 0 (larger radii can have interesting effects but introduce artifacts way too often). Set the highlight amount to 0 and bump up the Midtone Contrast to +64. You will likely have to check Show More Options to get at all these settings.

The great thing here is how well it works with high bit order data (16-bit) files allowing you to compress extreme contrasts into something reasonable.

enjoy,

Sean

[Diane Fields]

Try Image->Adjustments->Shadow/Highlight with a Shadow Amount of 56%, Tonal Width 50%, and Radius 0 (larger radii can have interesting effects but introduce artifacts way too often). Set the highlight amount to 0 and bump up the Midtone Contrast to +64. You will likely have to check Show More Options to get at all these settings.

The great thing here is how well it works with high bit order data (16-bit) files allowing you to compress extreme contrasts into something reasonable.

enjoy,

Sean

Sean, I was going to suggest that. I think its really the easiest solution for someone just starting to work with Photoshop. However, if the new photographer is also working with RAW---then it is generally handled fairly easily before conversion. Still, depending upon the RC (raw converter), sometimes you still have trouble with shadows and highlights and the adjustment of shadows/highlights in photoshop can help futher. Curves are very difficult for a beginner to get their head around I think.

I like to use the adjustment in a separate layer so I can adjust further, but then that's another lesson, isn't it? LOL.

I wanted to add that Frank's tutorial is a very accepted way to accomplish this (and a good one with visuals which are often needed by those new to working with graphics apps and digital capture). There are a great many photographers that shoot only in jpeg and are faced with this problem. If its an image worth the time, why not duplicate the file (image/duplicate) and try both ways--Frank's and shadow/highlights. There's never just one way to work in PS--and sometimes its worth the effort to try more than one way.

Diane

[Asher Kelman]

Frank,

Again, you made a great contribution in starting this important topic. This is something we needed by everyone.

Asher

[Bernard Wolf]

I used the shadow/highlight tool in CS2 first using the highlight slider to tone down the exterior on a duplicate layer and then the same with the shadow slider for the interior. It works well and it's simple.

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Bernard, your link doesn't work as an image appearing in this thread.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35938691@N00/263291426/

Could you try linking from another site or simplify the name. The url by itself works. However, it is better linked!

Asher

[Asher Kelman]

Bernard,

Your work on the image shows that the details are present in the blown out areas. That's an improvement, however, there's some way to go. I'd work with two layers and optimize the outside bright area separately.

Adding a curves layer and simply blended with "Merge" increase the density of the bright areas.

I cannot see optimizing with just one tool.

Asher

[Bernard Wolf]

Asher,
Actually I did work on the inside and outside on seperate layers. Here's another one with outside worked on a little more.

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1MaEoI82lPtiLPITSBmIqd8QH96JF1_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1MaEoI82lPtiLPITSBmIqd8QH96JF1)