Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
One of the most common digital photography problems is photos where the
subject is backlit, so it is almost a black silhouette. I think it's so common because
the human eye adjusts for backlit situations so well that, to our naked eye, everything
looks great, but the camera exposes much differently and that shot that looked very
balanced when you took it, really looks like what you see below. The Shadows slider
(which replaced the Fill Light slider in the Basic panel), does the best job of fixing this
problem of anything I've ever seen, but there is one little thing you need to add.
Step One:
In this image, the sky looks properly
exposed, but the building is totally in the
shadows. While I was looking at the scene,
everything looked fine because our eyes
instantly balance the exposure of the scene,
but unfortunately, our camera doesn't—
it exposed for just the sky, leaving the build-
ing in shadows. Before we fix the backlit
problem, increase the Exposure a little to
see if that helps (I dragged it over to +0.45
without blowing out the highlights), then
drag the Highlights slider to the left to -49
to lower the brightest highlights in the
overly bright sky (hey, it helps).
Step Two:
To open up the foreground , click-and-drag
the Shadows slider to the right (here,
I dragged to around +79). Back in Light-
room 3, you didn't want to drag the Fill
Light slider (the Shadows slider's lesser-
quality LR3 counterpart) that far, because
it made the image look funky. Luckily, you
don't get that same heavy-handed look
in Lightroom 4. If you do crank up the
Shadows slider pretty high (like I did here),
then the photo may start to look washed
out (as seen here), but in the next step,
we'll fix that with just one simple move.
TIP: Watch Out for Noise
If an image has noise in it, it's usually in
the shadow areas, so if you do open the
shadows a lot, any noise gets amplified.
Keep an eye out for it as you drag, and
if you do see a lot, go to the Detail panel
to reduce the luminance and color noise
(see the next project for more on this).
