UNDER-EXPOSED SHADOWS
Because we’ve set the camera to
capture this landscape’s brighter
highlights, our under-exposed shadows
have been plunged into darkness.EDIT PANEL
This panel gives you access to all the
global and selective tone-tweaking tools
you’ll need in order to produce a
balanced exposure.EXPOSURE COMPENSATION
If you’re working on a RAW file then you
can adjust the overall exposure of your
image’s tones using this dropdown
menu’s incremental presets. (Note
that this tool is unavailable if you’re
editing a JPEG file.) In effect, it enables
you to simulate opening up your Nikon’s
aperture (or closing it down) by up to
one f-stop. Here we’ve opened it up by
a third of an f-stop to lift the shadows a
little without losing too much subtle
highlight detail. We show you how
to create
user-defined
EV presets for
more subtle or
precise edits in
our three-step
walkthrough
below.TONE PALETTE
The tone-tweaking tools are segregated
into two palettes. This one enables
you to make basic adjustments to
Brightness, Contrast and Saturation.
When you brighten up under-exposed
shadows the colours in these areas can
look a bit drab, so it’s worth boosting
the strength of the Saturation slider to
tease out more colour information in
the shadows. You can edit JPEG files
with this palette’s tools.TONE (DETAIL) PALETTE
This palette’s sliders enable you to
make selective tonal adjustments
to your image, so it’s very useful for
revealing missing shadow detail without
over-exposing healthy highlights and
blowing out the palest areas.HIGHLIGHT PROTECTION
We metered the camera to capture
highlight detail in our landscape, but we
can still reveal a little more information
in the brightest parts of the shot by
dragging this slider to the right. This
adjusts the highlights without altering
the darker shadows.SHADOW PROTECTION
This powerful slider enables you to
selectively brighten under-exposed
shadows without clipping correctly-
exposed highlights. Check out our
video lesson to see it in action.D-LIGHTING HS
This clever tool is handy when dealing
with backlit subjects that have little
shadow detail and blown-out highlights.
It adjusts the contrast to reveal more
shadow and highlight information.
However, it can create a washed-out
shot, so keep it to a low setting and try
to fix any problems using the Highlight
and Shadow Protection sliders first.Reveal shadow detail
Selectively adjust a photo’s shadows using a combination of sliders and presets
Create a custom EV preset
Produce and save user-defined Exposure Value presets that you can apply in a click
1 TRY AN EV PRESET
Open our start image, shadow_start.NEF, and
click on the Exposure Compensation icon in the
Edit panel. Next, click on the dropdown icon. Here
you can simulate the effect of opening or closing
the lens aperture by up to a stop in eight plus or
minus increments. Leave it on the +0.0 EV preset
for the moment.
2 MAKE A MANUAL ADJUSTMENT
Instead of using the limited collection of EV
presets, you can make a unique user-defined
exposure adjustment using the Exposure
Compensation slider. This enables you to brighten
or darken the image by up to five stops, or
produce a more subtle exposure tweak that won’t
over-expose a shot’s correctly exposed highlights.3 REGISTER THE ADJUSTMENT
Click on the Exposure Compensation dropdown
menu and pick Register Adjustments. Label your
custom manual EV adjustment setting in the
Register Adjustments window. Click on Rename,
then OK. You can now access your manual user
adjustment as an Exposure Compensation preset.
You can create multiple custom EV presets.WHERE TO GET
CAPTURE NX-D
It’s made for Nikons,
and it’s completely free!Capture NX-D is available
from the Nikon website at
http://nikonimglib.com/ncnxd/
As new Nikons are introduced,
Capture NX-D should be the first
software to support them. Another
advantage is that it exactly replicates
Picture Controls and other settings.NIKON KNOW-HOW
Watch the video online at bit.ly/NPhoto56 March 2016 101
SHADOW DETAIL