camera RAW
‘
‘Expose right’ and multiple exposures
This inequitable distribution of levels has given rise to the idea of ‘exposing right’. This work practice
encourages the user seeking maximum quality to increase the exposure of the shadows (without
clipping the highlights) so that more levels are afforded to the shadow tones. This approach to
make the shadows ‘information rich’ involves increasing the amount of fi ll light or lighting with less
contrast in a studio environment. If the camera RAW fi le is then opened in the camera RAW dialog
box the shadow values can then be reassigned their darker values to expand the contrast before
opening it as a 16 Bit/Channel fi le. When the resulting shadow tones are edited and printed, the
risk of visible banding in the shadow tones is greatly reduced.
This approach is not possible when working with a subject with a fi xed subject brightness range,
e.g. a landscape, but in these instances there is often the option of bracketing the exposure
and merging the highlights of one digital fi le with the shadows of a second. The example above
shows the use of a layer mask used to hide the darker shadows in order to access the bit-rich
shadows of the underlying layer and regain the full tonal range of the scene. See Essential Skills:
Photoshop CS2 or Photoshop Elements 4.0 Maximum Performance for detailed post-production
editing techniques.
Expose right and adjust leftSeparate exposures can be combined in image-editing in Photoshop or Elements