Correcting poor exposure

[cduggan_purdue]

I was recently in New York and like so many before visited Time Square on a bustling Saturday night only to find my shots seemingly underexposed. Without having an opportunity to revisit to try to retake the shots, I am now hoping to use either Iphoto or Photoshop to correct the exposure/contrast. Any help is greatly appreciated to salvage this shot.

[kirbinster]

Your photo comes up on my screen as a box with an "X" in it

[Nicole]

Welcome! I fixed your photo so that it shows up. You might want to have a read on how to post pictures here.

Which versions of iPhoto / Photoshop are you using?

[navcom]

Is this more what you are looking for? I just loaded it into Photoshop and used "shadows/highlights" under Image/adjustments. This is a quick way to bring out an underexposed area without blowing out your already properly exposed parts. Be careful...you can easily overdo it and lose a lot of image quality.

[spookie5150]

What mode do you usually shoot in? I would suggest shooting in RAW format which will allow you to make corrections to exposure and many other settings after uploading the pics to your computer. iPhoto reads RAW files easily. Most DSLR's will come with a disc that contains software for reading RAW files, if you don't have that, there is plenty of freeware online.

[kirbinster]

It shows up as a big white empty flickr box now, and when I click on it I get the following:

The photo you were looking for has been deleted.
You might like to ask cduggan_purdue about it!

[kencaleno]

Originally Posted by cduggan_purdue

I was recently in New York and like so many before visited Time Square on a bustling Saturday night only to find my shots seemingly underexposed. Without having an opportunity to revisit to try to retake the shots, I am now hoping to use either Iphoto or Photoshop to correct the exposure/contrast. Any help is greatly appreciated to salvage this shot.

Be careful if you use shadow/highlight to combat underexposure-it can create undesirable artefacts. For underexposed images best way is to:

Ctrl+J
Blend mode Screen
Adjust opacity to suit before flattening/save ; and for over exposed images:

Ctrl+J
Blend mode Multiply
Adjust opacity to suit before flattening/save

very simple to do and they work! By the way, I have corrected underexposure and distortion. Regards, ken

[kencaleno]

Originally Posted by spookie5150

What mode do you usually shoot in? I would suggest shooting in RAW format which will allow you to make corrections to exposure and many other settings after uploading the pics to your computer. iPhoto reads RAW files easily. Most DSLR's will come with a disc that contains software for reading RAW files, if you don't have that, there is plenty of freeware online.

It is just as easy to may those adjustments with Jpegs-If you nail exposure and white balance while making the image,you will never need raw. And this is simple to do-I teach it all the time. Regards,Ken