The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Fixing Underexposed Photos the Easy Way

This is a tonal correction for people who don't like making tonal corrections (more than 60 million Americans suffer from the paralyzing fear of MTC [Making Tonal Corrections]). Since this technique requires no knowledge of Levels or Curves, it's very popular, and even though it's incredibly simple to perform, it does a pretty incredible job of fixing underexposed photos.

Step One

Open an underexposed photo. The photo shown here could've used either a fill flash or a better exposure setting or both.

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Step Two

Press Command-J (PC: Control-J) to duplicate the Background layer (this duplicate will be named Layer 1 by default). On this new layer, change the blend mode in the Layers palette from Normal to Screen to lighten the entire photo.

[View full size image]

Step Three

If the photo still isn't properly exposed, just press Command-J (PC: Control-J) and duplicate this Screen layer until the exposure looks about right (this may take a few layers, but don't be shy about itkeep copying layers until it looks right).

Step Four

There's a good chance that at some point your photo will still look a bit underexposed, meaning you duplicated the layer again, but now it looks overexposed. What you need is "half a layer." (Half as much lightening.) Here's what to do: Lower the Opacity of your top layer to "dial in" the perfect amount of light, giving you something between the full intensity of the layer (at 100%) and no layer at all (at 0%). For half the intensity, try 50% (did I really even have to say that? Didn't think so). Once the photo looks properly exposed, choose Flatten Image from the Layers palette's flyout menu.

[View full size image]

Tip

To fix an overexposed photo, try this same technique, but instead of using Screen (in Step 2), choose Multiply instead.

Before

After (using multiple Screen blend mode layers)