There are times when we take photos and look at them after only to realize that they appear a little too dark or underexposed. An afternoon scene could look like an impromptu eclipse occurred and everyone’s smiling faces are in shadow. We can do a reshoot but sometimes it just isn’t possible. The moment may have passed, or it might be expensive to do a retake, or the subject is not available, or we’re just too lazy to get up, drag all our camera equipment to the location and shoot again with the right exposure settings this time around.

{Dark Photo}

Don’t worry, post-processing to the rescue! Fixing dark photos with an image editing program might just be our next best and probably most convenient option. Keep in mind that not all dark photos can be saved and brightened up, whether you are using Photoshop or Lightroom. Sometimes, the dark patches in the shot are just too black that there are no details to bring out to the light. But for those that are not too far gone into the Dark Side, a few basic brightening techniques can work wonders for your gloomy photos. The tools in Photoshop and Lightroom might look and be labeled differently but the principles are the same. Also, there are various ways to brighten up photos in both programs and I’ll list a few here:

Lightroom:

Exposure– drag the exposure slider to +1.00 stop or higher to brighten up the photo.{Screen Shot Here} The more you drag it, the brighter it goes to the point where light areas (highlights) can become blown out and lose their details. Also, the dark areas can start losing contrast and the entire photo can appear overexposed. We wouldn’t want that to happen so just drag it back down until you are satisfied with the outcome. {Video here}

Brightness (Lightroom 3) – Unlike the Exposure, the Brightness tool can make your lighter areas appear brighter while the dark areas remain in shadow. In the new released Lightroom 4, you have whites, increase, you increase the white space, decrease, the whites become darker. While I like this new tool in Lightroom 4, I’d like them to bring back “Brightness” and “Fill Light”.

Fill Light (Lightroom 3)– this tool acts like a real fill light by brightening very dark areas and showing more detail without blowing out the light areas. Just be careful because too much will create noise plus the photo will lose some contrast. If you have upgraded to Lightroom, you can use the “Whites” to decrease or increase the white space, but I’ll talk more in depth about that later.

I’m no expert and I’m sure there are more ways to brighten photos in Photoshop and Lightroom. After practicing your editing skills and getting used to your software, whichever you’re using, you’ll soon get the hang of it. Remember to save your edits once in a while!

{ Adding more Shadowing}

So now the next question is what photo editing program to use: Photoshop or Lightroom? I can’t really decide that for you, can I? I do have my preference (Adobe Lightroom 4). I guess the very simple answer would be to use what you’ve got. If you have both, use the one you’re most comfortable with, the one with results that satisfy you the most. They’re both fantastic and powerful image editing software, and either one can make your photos look brighter and more attractive.

{Shooting at 100 ISO and a Tripod for Sharp Images}

Photoshop:

Levels adjustment – you can brighten up a photo by dragging the gray slider a little to the left of the histogram in the Levels adjustment screen. To add contrast, drag the white slider to the left. This will also brighten the image but with less of the washed out look. Photoshop Elements go to Enhance, Brightness/Contrast and adjust accordingly.

{Adjusted by 80%}

Brightness/Contrast adjustment – this is a very simple tool where you can see quick results. Simply drag the brightness slider to the right to lighten up the shot, do the same with the contrast slider it doesn’t look overexposed. Just a little movement of the sliders can go a long way in making your photos nice and bright.
Auto Levels – if you want to brighten up your photo in a jiffy, you might want to try clicking on auto levels first to see if it’ll fix your shot the way you like. You’d be surprised! As you can see, in my not so humble opinion, Lightroom is far better for post processing.

{Auto Levels in Photoshop Elements 10}

Homemade Curry Spice

If you don’t have your favorite on hand (ours is S&B Curry Spice Mix which comes with and without salt added) This recipe is adapted from Chef Dancer on Food.com.

Ingredients

4 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons turmeric
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns ( 1/2 to 1)
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes ( 1/2 to 1)
1/2 teaspoon cardamom, whole,without pods
1/2 inch cinnamon sticks
1/4 teaspoon whole cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Directions

In a blender container, place all. Cover and grind for 1 to 2 minutes or till mixture is a fine powder.
Store spice mixture in airtight container in cool dry place.

When we take photos, sometimes we get everything right in-camera and sometimes we need to improve them a bit more in post-processing using an image editing program (I use Adobe’s Lightroom). Aside from tweaking my shots to make them brighter, fixing any awful color cast, straightening out the crooked horizon, removing dust and distracting objects, we can also blur the background to create more depth of field (DOF). Take a peek at my Chocolate Chip cookies here, it was a bad day, bad lighting, and I didn’t feel like lugging everything to the studio (I was full of excuses that day). We all have days like this working with photography, be it a professional or a novice. It’s fixable.

{Take as many photos as possible}

“What’s depth of field?” you might ask. Let me quote Wikipedia! “Depth of field (DOF) is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image.” Simply put, it’s the area in your photo that looks focused compared to the rest of the image. If your photo is completely in focus, with everything sharp and defined, it’s called “deep focus” or having a great depth of field. If only your subject is clear while the foreground and background are blurry, it’s called “shallow depth of field.” This gives the impression of distance as the background looks farther away from the subject.

You can use DOF for creative impact, to separate the subject from its surroundings, to blur out a distracting foreground or background, to highlight your point of focus, and other purposes. This is usually done in-camera by adjusting your aperture. Explaining this would take a whole other post but just bear in mind that the bigger the aperture number (in reference to the lens opening) the greater the DOF. The smaller the aperture number, the shallower the DOF. Now that’s easy enough to remember, right?

{Bad, bad, bad photo taken at 1600 ISO very grainy}

As I said earlier, we can’t always get it right in-camera. Sometimes we don’t adjust the aperture as we want it to be, or our camera is a primitive point and shoot and doesn’t have an aperture adjustment setting, or we just forgot to fix the settings. The good news is we can still create DOF in Lightroom using the graduated filter.

The term “graduated” means just that, a gradual change. With the graduated filter, you can edit exposure, sharpness, color balance, etc. This is also great for blurring out the background without making it look unnatural. To blur out the background in Lightroom, click and drag your cursor from the edge of the image frame to the image editing screen. This will show lines that will delineate the area you want to edit. You can adjust its angle and width just by dragging your cursor around the editing screen (don’t worry, you’ll quickly get the hang of it.) When the graduated filter lines are over the selected area, slide the Sharpness control to -100 to gradually blur the background from the subject. If you made a mistake, you can always undo what you did (wish this were always true in real life!).

Of course, you can also use the adjustment brush to blur local areas but the graduated filter tool can give a more uniform editing and covers a larger ground with one tweak of your controls. Aside from Lightroom’s standard graduated filter, you can also buy graduated filter presets. I like to use Pretty Presets’ filters which include Green Grass, Soften Background, and Cool Haze. In case you’re wondering, no, I’m not a secret marketer for Pretty Presets or Lightroom, and I’m not getting a single penny from promoting their products (wish I was!). I just find their software really helpful because goodness knows how many of my shots have been improved with post-processing.

{Finished Editing}

We oftentimes overlook our white balance setting whenever we take photographs. This is probably one of the main reasons the colors in the images we capture look too orangey, too blue, or too yellow. It is a dead giveaway for being amateurish and it is the most appalling way to ruin a beautiful subject or scene. Getting the colors right in photography is important to capture the pure essence of your subject, if not enhance it.

There are different sources of light and there are many ranges of color temperatures to use, from the lightest and coolest of blues to the warmest of yellows. Choosing the correct type will help cast the proper lighting to capture an image. Our eyes automatically adjust to the differences in color temperatures unlike digital cameras. Sometimes, we need to make slight changes in the settings to make the lighting just right. You’ll notice in the first photo above in comparison to the side by side that the “yellow” in the spaghetti is more apparent.

{Warm Tones using Light Room First Photo Warm Temp + 16 Tint +34}
Left Photo Warm Right Cool

Here are a few simple tips to get the perfect white balance in your Lightroom:

Tip 1 – Use the drop down menu in Lightroom to change the white balance.

The drop down menu in Lightroom will give you a number of options. Your camera is equipped with the same type of settings. Try previewing each of these settings to determine the type of outcome you get in your images.

Tip 2 – Get to know what sliders can do for your images.

Lightroom has two slider options for white balance correction:

Tint – is best utilized to temper the green and magenta. It would be better to use the temperature slider to initially adjust the color and the slider for tin will neutralize whatever tints of magenta and green are left.
Temperature – the temperature slider adjusts the color temperature. Moving the slider to the left will make the colors cooler while moving the slider to the right will give the image a warmer color cast.

{Cool Tones Temp -9 Tint + 2}

Tip 3 – The wonders of the dropper tool.

The dropper tool in Lightroom usually works with neutral colors, especially neutral gray, to correct your photo’s white balance. Click on the dropper tool in the WB window and hover it over the image you are working on. If your shot does not have gray areas, doing this will help you find the areas where the R, G, & B have equal values.

Photoshop vs. Photoshop Elements

Photoshop and Elements are two other programs you can use to magically transform your photographs into works of art! Many people say Photoshop is the best because it offers a lot more that Elements. It also costs a LOT more! More may not necessarily mean the best for you. It all depends on what you need.

Photoshop is everything you could ever want in a professional, full feature program. It comes with Paint Shop Pro and Elements. It give you a broad spectrum of functions you may need such as a 16 –bit support, an array of color management options, layer compositions, animation, non- square pixels, HTML exports, slices, large images custom CMYK separations and a whole bunch of other things I cannot even begin to comprehend. The whole program is pretty much hardcore! It can be daunting for a user with basic needs.

Photoshop Elements is adapted from Photoshop. It does away with some of the more elaborate features of Photoshop and keeps the core functions any ordinary Tom, Dick, Harry, or a Jane would care to use such as Channel Mixer, Curves, CMYK, Color Balance, calculations, running actions, and channels By removing some of the more complex features that give us the best part, it’s a whole lot cheaper. It still comes out as a powerful package that doesn’t sacrifice the quality of your work.