nice pic, but under exposed

[Annie7]

I took this picture, thinking it would be great, but turned out rather flat and under exposed. I took the pic with a Canon Rebel XT. I do have Photoshop, but it is PhotoShop 6, so rather old, but I do know it still can perform many operations that the more recent ones can. Is there anything I should do on PhotoShop to brighten it up?

Thanks a lot. Annie

[Lebowski]

You could try a used bookstore or library for a Photoshop 5, 6 or 7 book. Off the top of my head I can't remember how 6 looked, but I recall it was powerful enough for my needs.

[lissykeeper]

Hey Annie, I have the same camera and I have photoshop 7. It has been my experience so far that photoshop 7 is plenty powerful for most of my needs. the only limitation that I have found is that is will not process raw images, so I wound up buying lightroom to process raw's (but you could use the dpp software that came with your camera, I was just looking for any excuse to get lightroom LOL). Anyway, I hope you don't mind that I played with your image. I used both curves and levels to lighten.

I'm not sure how much you know about photoshop, so please skip over the parts you already know and excuse me for being so anal about detailed explanations!

Open your layers palette by going to Window and clicking on layers.

Layers are wonderful, you will be amazed at what you can do with layers!!

Once you have the layers palette open, use the circle that is half white/half black to add different layers.

The first layer I used was curves. I opened a curves layer and just pushed the curve up a little like this.


The great thing about layers is that you can use layer mask. See the little white box beside the new curve layer? That is a layer mask. We can use the brush with black and shades of grey to make parts of our new layer not show up. I used black to brush over the sky and the reflection in the water so that they wouldn't lose more detail. In this screen shot, you can see what the layer mask looked like after I painted the sky and reflection in. Everything white is effected by the curve layer, everything black is not effected.


It still wasn't quite as light as I thought it needed to be so I used that black and white circle again to add a levels layer. I just moved the middle slider a little to make it a little lighter.


I wasn't there, but the color seemed a little washed out to my eyes, so I also added a hue/saturation layer by using that black and white circle again. I just bumped up the saturation to a +5

Then I flattened the image. I hope this helps you! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask!!

[lissykeeper]

ohh, I totally forgot to include the final image!!

[Annie7]

Originally Posted by Lebowski

You could try a used bookstore or library for a Photoshop 5, 6 or 7 book. Off the top of my head I can't remember how 6 looked, but I recall it was powerful enough for my needs.

Thank you very much. That is an excellent suggestion. I will be on the the lookout for such a book! Annie

[Annie7]

Originally Posted by lissykeeper

ohh, I totally forgot to include the final image!!

Hi, so you are using the same camera! Just another quick question - do you use any particular lenses with it?

I want to say how much I appreciate the detailed information you gave, which I can easily follow, and the final image looks so much better. It brings out the color and details. I know nothing about layer masks, so I am going to enjoy learning. Thank you so much for sharing your skills and time. And a very Happy New Year to you, also!