editing underexposed photos

An underexposed picture will never completely be repaired, but there are some techniques in photoshop to try in correcting your photo.

I’m using an underexposed picture of Camille and friend, Owen.

The first step I did was lighten the photos. In photoshop go to Image – Adjustments – Curves (or Apple M on a mac). You are able to lighten it slightly from here.

If you adjust it too much the photo comes out looking much more pixilated and damaged then it has to be. After you adjust curves (or levels depending upon what you use), you need to duplicate layers. To do this go to Layers – Duplicate Layer (or apple J on a mac). Choose lighten for each layer on the drop menu where the layers are displayed. In this case I use 4 layers. Here is the result of the photo after each curve layer was applied and adjusted.  You must adjust the levels or curves of all the layers separately before you flatten them. You can tell from this picture that adding layers does not completely prevent pixilation. This way however does minimize the amount of pixilation through slowly and gradually lightening the image. Make sure to flatten the layers making one image. Afterwards you can try using the blur tool, or coloring actions. Here are the ones I did:

Johanna’s Tea Party

Or vintage honey

Tagged as: photography, tiny tips