› ›photoshop user› february 2016090
› › lightroom magazine › ›step one: Here’s the original
image—one of the amazing ceilings at
St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, Italy. It
needs a lot of work. The bright sunlight
coming into the dome fooled the cam-
era’s metering system (and, apparently,
the guy holding it, as well. Ahem...)
and underexposed most of the image
by quite a bit. That’s the key—there
are parts that are too bright, and ar-
eas I wish were brighter. This is where
the Adjustment Brush, which lets you
selectively dodge (make certain areas
brighter) and burn (make certain areas
darker), totally rocks. It was born for this
stuff, but I don’t use it until I at least
get my basic exposure right, so let’s do
that first. In the Develop module’s Basic
panel, let’s tweak the sliders to get us at
least in the ballpark.step two: Since it’s way under-
exposed, let’s start by dragging the
Exposure slider to the right to help the
overall brightness. The light coming in
from the top of the dome and the win-
dows is pretty bright, so let’s lower the
highlights in those areas by dragging
the Highlights slider to the left quite a
bit. Finally, I’d like to see more detail in
the shadow areas, so let’s open up the
Shadows a nice bit, too (as shown here).
Okay, it already looks a lot better, but
the areas right around the dome are still
pretty dark, and the gold ceiling area on
the left is too bright. The ceiling area at
the top center is too bright, too, and so
are the columns on either side of it. As
is often the case, there are some areas
that need to be brighter and some that
need to be darker.