Photoshop-Highlights-Shadows

Wednesday, December 21, 2011
(Winter Solstice-Shortest Daylight of the Year)

Photoshop

(Highlights-Shadows)

    Today's instalment has to do with improving a photo. When you take a photograph, not all of the detail will show. There are areas that because they either are very dark or are in the shadows (Shadows), will not have their detail shown in the photo. Similarly, there are areas of the photo that are too bright (highlights). 

     However, even though you cannot see the detail in the untouched (not Photoshopped) photo,that doesn't mean that the information or detail is not there! Yo u need to remember that your camera is set most times on automatic, so it records or captures information based on how you programmed the camera.  However, just like film, your camera still records information at the extremes of the image or in the highlights and shadows.

     So, today, I'd like to present one of the functions or controls in  Photoshop, and probably in most other image-editing softwares titles "highlights-shadows". What this function will do is try and adjust these 2 extremes in order to either preserve the detail (highlights), or to improve the detail (shadows). In the case of highlights, these areas reflect more light than the medium tones (greys). AS such they will overexpose and lose their details.

Here's a nice Tootsietoy that I just bought and sold.

Notice the shadow areas where the arrow are pointing to.

These areas lack detail.

Keep in mind that when I use the term "shadow", I'm using it in the context of a photographic term.

AS such, any very dark area is termed a "shadow", and not just the "real" use of the term inthe context of the English language.

The above screen capture via "SnagIt" software, shows you where the

"Shadows/Highlights" command is.

The before and after images.

Notice how the shadow detail has improved greatly in the rubber tire areas.

In the dark fabric area, there has been some change. However, the truck and oil tanker are most important if I'm selling a product, or placing the photo on E-Bay. I want to show detail!

Here is another image - a Hubley 1950's MG.

However, before I use the Shadows/Highlights function, I want to better expose the image.

I adjusted the exposure in this image.

I stopped when the detail in the highlight areas starts to disappear.

I used the command Brightness/Contrast, but just as easily could  have used the Exposure command.

I elevated the "brightness" level by +26, but probably 20-22 would have been better, since the highlight detail is starting to be lost.

Now I'll return to the Shadows/Highlights command

I increased the "Shadows" value by 51%

I then reduced the "Highlights" value by 20%

What the Highlights function does is to make the highlights darker to bring back the detail

Here's our dog Buddy, a 9-year old miniature Poodle. 

He had just come back from the groomer last week,so Heidi (my wife) said, let's photograph him.

So I placed him on my photography table, set the exposure, and took 20 photos.

All were out-of-focus, as I normally use the camera in the manual setting.

Anyway, this image was the best!

I set the "Shadows" slider to 35%, but that created a problem of "noise".

There was not enough exposure overall, so the "shadows" never received enough exposure.

Consequently, when I used the "Shadows/Highlights" tool, there was a problem.

The "noise" in this case, is colour noise. Notice the tiny green and red pixels in the shadow area.

The "noise" problem is corrected with an other function called "Noise".

That's found in the Filter >> Noise >> Reduce Noise area.

Here is the image capture with the settings for reducing the colour noise

Here are the before/after  results shown through enlargements.

As usual, 

I bid everyone a

good morning,

good afternoon,

or

good evening