Image Processing Reference
In-Depth Information
The next example shows how well Camera Raw can recover detail in what looks
like a hopelessly overexposed image. Figure 3.13 shows the starting image, a leaf in
snow. I shot this without noticing that the camera was still set to manual exposure. The
first lesson to be learned here is that 1/60 second at f5.6 isn't the right exposure for
bright sun and snow!
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Figure 3.13
The starting image is grossly overexposed. Had this been a JPEG file, it would already be in the trash.
You can see from the histogram that most of the image is against the right side. I
turned off clipping highlights for a better view of the image. With the Highlights box
checked, everything in the image is red except the leaf.
My first step was to make exposure corrections to see if there was anything that
could be recovered. I ended up subtracting almost 2.5 stops of exposure to the image,
as shown in Figure 3.14. However, I did recover significant amounts of detail in the
snow and fixed the exposure for the leaf quite nicely.
After setting the White Balance and adjusting the Tint to remove the magenta
cast, I made adjustments to Shadows and tweaked the Exposure control a bit more.
Finally, I adjusted Brightness and Contrast to arrive at Figure 3.15.
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