Fixing underexposed images in Photoshop: Recovering shadows, fixing colors and saving the shot

 

 

Supposing that you don't have access to a light meter, it's inevitable that you'll miss some exposures on occasion. If you blow your photo out, it's possible that you can't recover the highlight data. If you underexpose an image, you have a better chance at recovering the important visual information. How can you fix an underexposed image in Photoshop?

Aaron Nace of Phlearn has published a new video tutorial showing us how to deal with this exact issue. If you'd like to download the sample images used in the video below, click here.

Ultimately, we want to bring up the shadows and recover as much detail and original color as possible in the underexposed photo. There's a balancing act here too, determining how much visible noise you are okay with introducing.

(Via Phlearn)