Sunny indoor photos

[Bayla]

What's the best way to deal with indoor pictures taken in front of windows with the sun shining through which makes everything in the foreground look dark? I got quite acceptable results using auto smartfix, but wondered about doing it in full editor mode and maybe getting an even better result.

Bayla

[Daviskw]

Hi Bayla

The Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Shadows/Highlights is made for just the situation.

You could also use a levels adjustment layer to increase the lighting in the shadows then use the mask to hide what you don't want.

Butch

[Bayla]

Thanks Butch,

I think there was something on one of the workflow course about that - I seem to remember a picture of a boy in a car - he was all in shadow and the sun was streaming in through the car window...I'll check out my saved video and try out your suggestion.

Bayla

[Wendy]

Hi Bayla ...

Its day 12 :)

Wendy

[Bayla]

Wendy,

Thanks....I've only just got around to looking for it so you've saved me the job! Have been spending the evening PSE-ing some photos I took at our girls' school show way back in February - I took some shots of the choir for a friend whose daughter had a solo & considering I was shooting in the dark with no flashgun, just the little pop up thing that comes on the 300D, I was amazed at the quality of the pictures. They responded very well to levels and I managed to get rid of the orangey tint that they all had. Now to tackle my overly bright indoor ones....

Bayla

[Daviskw]

Bayla

Just another suggestion since you know how to use levels.

If you have some photos you want to change the lighting instead of just adjusting the intensity try this.

Select a dark area say on the face with the lasso. Make it a darker shadow but not close to black. Now give it a good size feather..say 12 pixels on a 300 dpi picture.

Now open a levels adjustment layer and using the sliders gently reduce or eliminate the shadow. If you get a little edge that is ok you can always add gaussian blur to the mask.

Now deselect the shadow and set your foreground color to white. Reduce your brush opacity to 20 percent or so. Now with white brush over any other shadows you want to reduce or eliminate. You can build up lightness slowly because of the reduced opacity.

This works very good on face shadows when making glamour shots.

Butch

[Bayla]

Thanks Butch,

I'm on my way to bed now (got sidetracked by your excellent video on layers :) ) but I'll try that out in the morning....

G'nite

Bayla

[Wendy]

Hi Bayla ...

I have had excellent results with the 300D withough the flash ... I tend to use it in places where flash photography isn't allowed :)

Wendy

[graficalicus]

Another quick suggestion:

make a duplicate of the layer (or make a fast selection of the especially dark area and press <Ctrl/Cmd>+<J> to put it on its own layer) and change the blend mode of the duplicate layer to Screen - also try Lighten and/or Soft Light, depending on the image.

You can repeat this as needed, with multiple layers, and/or adjust the opacity of the duplicated layer(s) to suit.