From the course: Lightroom Classic: Tips and Quick Fixes

How do I fix an image that's too bright? - Lightroom Tutorial

From the course: Lightroom Classic: Tips and Quick Fixes

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How do I fix an image that's too bright?

- One of the purposes of photography is to capture the right exposure so we could see all of the details in an image. But there are things that can get in the way. Maybe your camera was in a manual mode or you bumped a setting like exposure compensation, or maybe the camera just got confused by the different lighting conditions. Fortunately, we can fix images that are too bright. However, this is a lot easier with a RAW file then with a JPEG or a TIFF. I've switched to folder three, and I want to tackle an image that's too bright. Let's start with this one here. If we go in to our develop settings, this is a pretty easy fix. Usually clicking the auto button will take a good guess. And you notice that with the RAW data, Lightroom was able to do quite a bit to recover. If I need to, I can often bring a little bit more back in the highlights, and you see how some of those overexposed areas on that skull are recovered. Let's go to another image and do this one by hand. Typically speaking, we want to bring things down. If you look at the histogram, you can better see this. This shows you how the pixel information is distributed. Clicking on these two corners will also show clipping. Here, we know the image is too bright because it looks too bright. Plus, the clipping overlays, the red areas, show us areas that have been pushed at 100% pure white, which means no detail whatsoever. Now, as I drag the exposure slider, you see how we start to move that data back to the middle. And by playing with things like the highlight recovery, and the black point or shadows here, we can get a nice, detailed image and even bump up the contrast a little. And you see how that histogram starts to expand. But as you go forward, those clipping indicators are important. Notice here how we have some blue. That indicates areas where the blacks have been clipped. We can lift the shadows up slightly, and the black point just a little, and now we've got good distribution. I see a few little bits of red here. So, if I take that highlight down, those are recovered. And now it really did a nice job. Let's take a look there at the previous, and I'll undo. The original and the fix. And you see it's quite a bit better. By paying attention to exposure, particularly with RAW files, it's really easy to bring back the right areas. Just remember, it's not usually enough to just move the exposure slider. You're often going to have to work with shadows and highlights, and maybe the white point in black point as well.

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