Into The Light

A Technique To Easily Correct A Photograph

Where Strong Backlighting Has Put The Foreground Subject In Shadow

Using Photoshop, one can quickly and easily correct a photograph in which the background exposure immerses the foreground elements into shadow. Here's how it's done.

1) Invoke the Open command from the file drop-down menu and select your image. In this example, notice how the background exposure has forced the foreground elements into shadow. Photoshop can quickly tweak the exposure and correct the poor illumination of the foreground elements. We begin by selecting the foreground image using any of the available selection tools found within Photoshop.

2) I used the Magnetic Lasso tool for this example, but you can use any of the selection tools that's are appropriate for your image. The objective is to isolate the background from the foreground elements.

3) Choose Select>Feather and apply the Feather Selection command to your final selection. I used a Feather Radius of 3 pixels. Play around to determine the best value for your image.

4) Go to the Edit drop-down menu and open the Fill command. Use a 50% Gray value for the Contents. Make sure the Blending mode is set to Color Dodge and choose an opacity of 50%. Select OK.

5) Notice how the exposure of the foreground elements are improved. If the 50% opacity in the fill command is not sufficient for your purposes, increase or decrease the opacity as needed.

6) Here's a little something extra. Invert the selection using the Select>Inverse command. This makes the background active and protects the foreground elements.

7) Like before, open the Fill command and choose 50% gray for the contents and a value of 50% for the opacity. This time, however, change the blending mode to Color Burn and select OK. This modifiction has the effect of darkening the background. You may want to play around with the opacity percentage and use a more appropriate setting for your image.

8) Here's the before and after images. Notice how the foreground elements have brightened and the background has darkened. The overall exposure has been greatly improved using a Photoshop technique that is both quick and easy to use.
Before
After