Underexposure, please help :(

[brita10]

I shoot in JPG because RAW files are so huge, but maybe I shouldn't, I hear you can easily fix exposure with RAW. Anyways, I took some pictures, and the person is too dark, but the background is perfect. How can I make the picture look good, make the person lighter but not take away from the color in the background?

[zona5101]

short of reshooting it with additional fill light, you would increase exposure on the person using a tool like an adjustment brush in Lightroom...or using a layer mask and making an exposure adjustment in Photoshop (or a similar tool)

[falafelicious]

Try the Shadow/Highlight feature in Photoshop.

[LeeR]

The problem I see here is that your image is actually overexposed with the most important element being in the shadows. If the whole thing was underexposed we could do a simple layers adjustment, but since the brights are already lacking detail we can't do that. We are forced to do some selctive adjustments; lowering values in the brights, raising values in your friend: no small task. I took a quick stab at it and got the image below, but I used a boatload of tricks to make it happen; too many to describe here. It's not perfect but as I said, it was just a quick effort. Oh, and I did all i could for your friend but I'm afraid I can't make him look any better. Now if you were to come to Florida I've got a son I could introduce you to who makes Taylor Lautner look like a chump!

[wulf]

Working from your RAW file, process it twice, giving a version where the bright areas are spot on and a version where the darker areas are spot on and the rest is blown out. You can now combine those (either manually or using HDR software) and achieve some kind of fix to the problem of different areas needing different exposures.

You are still stuck with problems like the bridge support growing out of your subject's head but those are matters of composition rather than exposure.

Wulf