Editing Photos Shot In Harsh Light

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trxlation

New member
Does anyone have some tips for editing photos shot in harsh light?
Whenever I try editing a photo shot in harsh light, it ends up looking absolutely horrible. I understand that photography is all about light and bad light usually means a bad photo, but sometimes you just don't have control over the light.
I usually decrease the saturation, increase the shadows, and sometimes even decrease the contrast, but the image just ends up looking like garbage. I can convert to black and white and it looks alright, but I want color.
Any suggestions?
 
Horoscope Fish

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
It really depends on the specific photo and what you have to work with. Do you shoot raw or .JPG? If you shoot raw you'll have a great deal more lattitude, in every regard, when it comes to processing.
 
B

Blacktop

Senior Member
trxlation said:
Does anyone have some tips for editing photos shot in harsh light?
Whenever I try editing a photo shot in harsh light, it ends up looking absolutely horrible. I understand that photography is all about light and bad light usually means a bad photo, but sometimes you just don't have control over the light.
I usually decrease the saturation, increase the shadows, and sometimes even decrease the contrast, but the image just ends up looking like garbage. I can convert to black and white and it looks alright, but I want color.
Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
An example of such a photo would be helpful. Shooting in harsh light usually means lots of blown highlights and unwanted shadows all over the place.
There is nothing that you can do in post to recover blown highlights. You can try and expose to the highlights (https://photographylife.com/exposing-to-the-right-explained) but that may lead to very under exposed shadows that you may not be able to recover .

My first advice would be, to wait when the light is more agreeable or if that is not possible, than bracketing should help.
 
T

trxlation

New member
20160423-610_0837.jpg
This photo would be a good example. I tried uploading some more, but my computer kept having issues.
 
B

Blacktop

Senior Member
Since you have image editing turned on, I took the liberty to do a quick edit in LR.(in the future if you do not want anyone to download your shot, you can turn image editing off.)

I decreased highlights to 0 ,increased shadows to +75 and dropped the exposure by one stop. (I also fixed the distortion somewhat as well)

20160423-610_0837.jpg
 
T

trxlation

New member
Blacktop said:
Since you have image editing turned on, I took the liberty to do a quick edit in LR.(in the future if you do not want anyone to download your shot, you can turn image editing off.)

I decreased highlights to 0 ,increased shadows to +75 and dropped the exposure by one stop. (I also fixed the distortion somewhat as well)

View attachment 233929
Click to expand...

That does look a bit better. Thank you. I'll have to go play around with some more pictures.
 
Fred Kingston

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
Not to discourage you from buying anything photo related... but an ND filter in the above image wouldn't have done a thing... unless you used a graduated ND to give you a couple stops of difference between the sky, and the buildings...
 
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aroy

Senior Member
I use Nikon NX-D.

Harsh light means a wider dynamic range. I normally end up shooting in harsh tropical sun. After processing RAW files the images look fine.

The displays and prints normally use 8 bits, and the RAW output is 12/14 bits. To get all the information from the image, you have to remap the 12/14 bits to 8 bits. If you expose correctly, the highlights will be just right, so you have to recover the data in shadows.

There are different methods of recovering shadows
. Use Active D Light presets. These recover shadows in predefined steps.
. Use Shadow recovery function. This has a slider so that you recover as much as you like
. Use custom curve for maximum flexibility.

Once the shadows are recovered, you then adjust the brightness and/or contrast to your liking.

20160423-610_0837.jpg

My effort with jpeg. With RAW it would be much better.
I tried a bit of vertical perspective control to straighten out the buildings.
 
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T

trxlation

New member
aroy said:
I use Nikon NX-D.

Harsh light means a wider dynamic range. I normally end up shooting in harsh tropical sun. After processing RAW files the images look fine.

The displays and prints normally use 8 bits, and the RAW output is 12/14 bits. To get all the information from the image, you have to remap the 12/14 bits to 8 bits. If you expose correctly, the highlights will be just right, so you have to recover the data in shadows.

There are different methods of recovering shadows
. Use Active D Light presets. These recover shadows in predefined steps.
. Use Shadow recovery function. This has a slider so that you recover as much as you like
. Use custom curve for maximum flexibility.

Once the shadows are recovered, you then adjust the brightness and/or contrast to your liking.

View attachment 234314

My effort with jpeg. With RAW it would be much better.
I tried a bit of vertical perspective control to straighten out the buildings.
Click to expand...

Wow, that is very impressive. Especially for a jpeg!
 
S

sl60

Senior Member
I did this in Gimp with a perspective correction, a Simple Contrast Fix script, a quick Levels adjustment, and Curves--about a minute total. Obviously it could be lighter or darker, as you wish.

overexposedphoto--perspective corrected--2.jpg
 

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