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This upright shot was taken at
Whitby Abbey in Yorkshire. It’s
underexposed because the
photographer needed to retain
the brighter white feather detail
in the foreground ducks and the
clouds behind the abbey. It’s also
slightly tilted to the right.
Using Lightroom, we’ll fix the tilt
first by going to the Transform Panel
and rotating it fractionally, then
adjusting Scale to fit^1. We’ll also
take the Y Offset slider slightly to the
right, just to make sure we have the
maximum area possible below
the nearest duck, which gives
us a compositional anchor
at the base of the image.In the Basic Panel, we can now push
the Shadows Slider to the right to
recover lost detail in the darker
areas^2. Approximately +50 will
be enough to lift the detail without
introducing any unwanted noise.
In the Curves
Panel, we select
the Point Curve
and push up a
gentle curve
from the middle
to lighten the
whole image
a bit more^3.
Keep it subtle so
you don’t blow
the highlights.Image Rescue
Exposure issues at the time of shooting can
be addressed with the help of LightroomNo zing
Q
When I try to print
shots with vivid
colours, the
resultant prints are much
duller than on-screen.
What am I doing wrong?
Jeremy FrenchA
You’re doing nothing wrong,
Jeremy. The problem is that
some of the colours that
display on an RGB monitor
simply cannot be printed on paper using
the CMYK inks in your printer.
To get an approximate view of how an
RGB colour image will look when printed,
press Ctrl/Cmd+Y in Photoshop. This
shows a preview in CMYK mode, but
leaves you to work in RGB mode.132Snow white
Q
My attempts at
snowdrop images
last year were
overexposed – how can
I improve them this time?
Joan PortlandA
Snowdrops are beautiful but,
being white, are tricky to
expose for. Avoid shooting
them with direct sunlight
unless it’s early and less intense – I prefer
bright but overcast skies, as it makes a
balanced exposure easy. Expose for the
highlights: the shadows can be lightened
if you shoot raw, but lost detail can’t be
recovered. Always use your camera’s
histogram to check the exposure, too.
Avoid the highlights going off the far
right of the histogram graph by using
negative exposure compensation
in one-third increments.All yellow
Q
I took a JPEG shot
of my white cat, and
the fur surrounding
it is all yellow. Can I correct
the colour cast?
Ken RoperA
If you’d shot raw – as I always
recommend – then this would
have been easy, Ken. All that’s
happened is that some indoor
lighting – probably a ceiling light or a lamp- has added a colour cast to the image
while shooting with a Daylight White
Balance. A quick tweak on the White
Balance Slider would correct it.
A JPEG image is harder to correct, but
not always impossible. I replicated your
issue as you can see here. In Photoshop,
I then applied a Photo Filter Adjustment
Layer with a Blue Filter at a Density of
25%: this immediately improved the
image by negating most of the colour
cast from the JPEG file.
Yellow cas t ǼɖƺˡǼɎƺȸ