What a Little Lighting Can Do

In all honesty, I edit almost ALL of my photos. Rarely is there a photo that I take that I don't think can be helped in some way by post-processing. Sometimes that little extra something is to adjust lighting levels or bumping up saturation to bring colors out. Sometimes it's using actions and textures to give it a whole new look.

Today I'm going to show you the same photograph, one SOOC (Straight Out of the Camera) and one that has only had the lighting levels adjusted.

The Original:



After Adjustments:



Basically my lighting trick is one I got from Scott Kelby's book about Photoshop Elements. You use CTRL-L, use the eyedroppers to choose the darkest, lightest and midtone gray colors and it adjusts for you. There's a few other details about setting up the default colors for each dropper, but if you really want to know them, just email me.