A picture taken from a digital camera may result in having some lighting problems. This is because they can't capture all the light, so in some cases, it may turn out good, so and so or bad. The good ones can still be edited to be better. And this tutorial can be used for every photo you take from a digital camera. In this case, it's underexposed, alot.
That's why I used this image. It becomes better after these simple settings.
STEP 1
Open image in Adobe photoshop.
Choose FILE-OPEN. Then select the image with bad lighting. Actually, all photos taken by a digital camera may have some lighting problems.
In this case, this photo is underexposed.
Open image in Adobe photoshop.
Choose FILE-OPEN. Then select the image with bad lighting. Actually, all photos taken by a digital camera may have some lighting problems.
In this case, this photo is underexposed.
Duplicate layer
LAYER-DUPLICATE LAYER
This way, if you make a mistake, you won't ruin everything in the photo.
STEP 2.
Now, go to
LAYER-NEW FILL ADJUSTMENT LAYER-LEVELS.
This is great because you may re edit the levels.
Now, move the middle slider a little bit to the left, so that, it'll make the middle contrast a little bit lighter.
Then, go to edit the RED, GREEN and BLUE. You need to trust your eye on this one.
Here's is already a little better, but still really underexposed.
STEP 3
Now, select the layer with the photo (the duplicate one), and go to IMAGE-ADJUSTMENTS-SHADOW & HIGHLIGHTS.
Do these settings. It'll make shadows less dark and highlights less light
STEP 4.
As you see, it's much better.
Now, we need to seperate the ground, from the sky.
I do this because as you see, the ground is the main problem (too dark), so we'll have to work on it seperately.
Grab the MASK tool.
Mask the ground.
Then go to SELECT-INVERSE.
This is to select the ground.
Then choose EDIT-COPY
Make a new layer
EDIT-PASTE.
This'll paste the ground on a new layer, so that we'll work with it seperately.
Open the levels tool
IMAGE-ADJUSTMENTS-LEVELS
Do these settings
STEP 5.
Now it's time to clean this layer up. As you may have noticed, I selected some parts of the sky, and now it's a bit overexposed, so I go on to clean the edges.
Go to
LAYER-LAYER MASK-REVEAL ALL.
This is great, because if you make a mistake, you simply take the white brush and it'll re appear.
With black brush, clear what you don't want.
You can even adjust opacity. If you think some parts are too bright for this, simply, grab the brush tool in black, lower opacity, and brush it. It'll lower the opacity of that part only. In this case, I after I cleaned the image and cleared some aprts of the sky, I grabbed a low opacity brush, and brushed some aprts that I thought became a bit overexposed, like the part after the brick wall (after the yellow plants).
Now, go to
LAYER-NEW FILL ADJUSTMENT LAYER-LEVELS.
This is great because you may re edit the levels.
Now, move the middle slider a little bit to the left, so that, it'll make the middle contrast a little bit lighter.
Then, go to edit the RED, GREEN and BLUE. You need to trust your eye on this one.
Here's is already a little better, but still really underexposed.
STEP 3Now, select the layer with the photo (the duplicate one), and go to IMAGE-ADJUSTMENTS-SHADOW & HIGHLIGHTS.
Do these settings. It'll make shadows less dark and highlights less light
STEP 4.As you see, it's much better.
Now, we need to seperate the ground, from the sky.
I do this because as you see, the ground is the main problem (too dark), so we'll have to work on it seperately.
Grab the MASK tool.
Mask the ground.
Then go to SELECT-INVERSE.
This is to select the ground.
Then choose EDIT-COPY
Make a new layer
EDIT-PASTE.
This'll paste the ground on a new layer, so that we'll work with it seperately.
Open the levels tool
IMAGE-ADJUSTMENTS-LEVELS
Do these settings
STEP 5.
Now it's time to clean this layer up. As you may have noticed, I selected some parts of the sky, and now it's a bit overexposed, so I go on to clean the edges.
Go to
LAYER-LAYER MASK-REVEAL ALL.
This is great, because if you make a mistake, you simply take the white brush and it'll re appear.
With black brush, clear what you don't want.
You can even adjust opacity. If you think some parts are too bright for this, simply, grab the brush tool in black, lower opacity, and brush it. It'll lower the opacity of that part only. In this case, I after I cleaned the image and cleared some aprts of the sky, I grabbed a low opacity brush, and brushed some aprts that I thought became a bit overexposed, like the part after the brick wall (after the yellow plants).
Then, go and select the background copy of the image. This time it'll only effect the sky, since we have the ground layer on top of it.
Go to IMAGE-ADJUSTMENTS-SHADOW,HIGHLIGHTS.
DO THESE SETTINGS
Go to IMAGE-ADJUSTMENTS-SHADOW,HIGHLIGHTS.
DO THESE SETTINGS
SHADOWS
Amount 0
Tonal Width 0
Radius 0
Amount 0
Tonal Width 0
Radius 0
HIGHLIGHTS
Amount 9-15
Tonal Width 30-40
Radius leave it as default.
You should get something like this.
I think it looks good.
This way, we didn't loose any details and the image's lighting has been restored.
Amount 9-15
Tonal Width 30-40
Radius leave it as default.
You should get something like this.
I think it looks good.
This way, we didn't loose any details and the image's lighting has been restored.
Here's the final result
The final result is much better.
I hope you enjoyed my tutorial.
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