Darkness correction on backlit underexposed foreground subjects

Sailor Guy

Member Location: St. Louis, Missouri USA Joined: Aug 19, 2012 10:23 Messages: 73 Offline

Solved by

Jul 21, 2018 23:41

I am a novice PhotoDirector user. I have several photos shot with a simple point-and-shoot camera that doesn't have a fill flash option. With a bright background, the foreground subjects are shrouded in darkness.

What steps can I take to adjust the exposure to light up the foreground subjects?

I have attached a few examples.

Thanks in advance,

Sailor Guy

Filename	Underexposed_Dark_Foreground_Subjects.pdf	Download
Description
Filesize	416 Kbytes
Downloaded:	270 time(s)

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jul 21. 2018 23:58

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tomasc

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline

Jul 22, 2018 23:29

There are several ways to fix the attached underexposed photos in PhotoDirector. Try each of the 4 ways to find the best for you. This is for the 3 individuals seated at the table. It looks like a 2f stop of underexposure.

Go to Layers/Duplicate/Blending mode: Screen. Do this 10 times.

Adjustments/Manual/Tone/Exposure 4.00.

Use the Adjustment selection brush and eraser on the subjects only. Check Intelligent and Feather=0. Set Tone/Exposure to 3.49.

Adjust the gamma curve. Could not get the adjustment I wanted here but you can try.

This is going from the fastest to the most detailed fix to preserve the background exposure. A fill flash would have done wonders here at the beginning.
Others may have different experiences and suggest different ways to tackle this.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jul 22. 2018 23:32

PIX

Senior Contributor Joined: Sep 21, 2011 00:02 Messages: 2910 Offline

Jul 23, 2018 06:20

Hello Sailor Guy,

Tomasc has provided some excellent suggestions.

In the attached (zipped) images, there are screenshot examples of adjustments that can be made either globally or using masks. These include some of the suggestions made above.

Please note that the screenshots showing your own image don't show the best result because they're low res images from your .PDF file.

PIX

Filename	Backlit Adj.zip	Download
Description
Filesize	3743 Kbytes
Downloaded:	304 time(s)

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