Brightness vs shadow recovery

Sometimes I take photos that are way underexposed due lack of light. what is the correct way to bump up the exposure? Using the brightness slider, or shadow recovery? I've noticed that when I use brightness some bits of the photo tend to overexpose. When I use shadow recovery it gets really noisy.

So what do you recommend? If you have better tips, please tell me!

Try for a better exposure when taking the picture. Set your f-stop, shutter speed, and ISO to get a low light exposure that needs less adjusting in post. You can often avoid under exposure when shooting.

 

When in post, instead of using brightness or shadow adjustments, try playing with curves or levels, which will give you more control over your light and dark areas and help you avoid the kind of post overexposure you’re running into.

Brightness is a very crude control.

 

Personally I'd use the curves tool, if your image editor has one.

 

Here's a very underexposed example -

And what a curves tool can do for it -

This was achieved in under a minute using the pretty basic editor on my smartphone.

 

IMO, getting to grips with the curves tool gives you access to probably the most versatile and powerful tool in the box. Short of using the one in your head!

Please don't take this the wrong way but I notice that since you joined the forum today, your only activity has been to post 2 very different questions to 2 different forums within 10 minutes of each other. I have nothing to add to the advice given so far.

There is no one answer to this question. It depends on the exposure levels throughout the image.

 

Newbies often hate to hear this, but the starting point for understanding any of the tools used to adjust tonality is understanding exposure and how it is represented in the histogram. If you have areas that are near the right hand side of the histogram, overall brightening will tend to overexpose them. If the histogram stops well below that--that is, all of the image is underexposed--it won't.

Sometimes I take photos that are way underexposed due lack of light. what is the correct way to bump up the exposure?

Exposure is the attribute of the amount of light striking the sensor (or film): Shutter and Aperture. It can only take place at capture, not after despite some software control that may may be called "Exposure" (it isn't, it's a control over brightness). Brightness isn't exposure.

Are you shooting raw or JPEG? You do not treat the two identically in terms of optimal exposure. The data is different, the meters in cameras, easily fooled are not optimized per se, for raw capture. Nor the Histograms on your camera of which you do not need to optimally expose your images. If your images are actually underexposed, you need more light striking the sensor, period.

Articles on exposing for raw:

OneZone – The Optimum Digital Exposure

ETTR

The Optimum Digital Exposure - Luminous Landscape

http://digitaldog.net/files/ExposeForRaw.pdf

The Unbearable Lightness of Mystic "Exposure" Triangle

Red Flowers Photography: Now It is Easy to See the Real Picture

Exposure for RAW vs. Exposure for JPEG

Beware the Histogram

Establishing the in-camera exposure meter calibration point is the way to extract more dynamic range from your camera

Choices in adjusting an image are easier to understand if you consider their effect on curves and histograms.

• Exposure raises the level of every pixel in the image
  
• Highlight adjusts the level of the top third (approximately) of the pixels
  
• Shadow adjusts the level of the lower third of the pixels
  
• Midrange adjusts the middle third of the curve
  
• Black adjusts the threshhold at the bottom of the curve below which every pixel is considered black.
  

All of these adjustments are useful in improving an image. You may even degrade the quality if that produces the desired effect. An example is grading a video to produce a noire effect. If misused, raising the exposure can obliterate detail in bright areas by exceeding the white threshold.

Choices in adjusting an image are easier to understand if you consider their effect on curves and histograms.

• Exposure raises the level of every pixel in the image
  

Sorry no. Exposure (photography) - Wikipedia

As to the others, it depends on the software and the data. Your description of Highlights in ACR/LR is absolutely not what's happening to the raw data.

"All generalizations are false, including this one." -Mark Twain

Edited December 23, 2020 by digitaldog

It's close enough for someone who doesn't spend time nearly every day with a three wheel grading desk.

It's close enough for someone who doesn't spend time nearly every day with a three wheel grading desk.

Sorry, again no. With linear raw data, HALF of all the data is encoded in the first stop of highlight. To suggest that Highlight adjusts the level of the top third (approximately) of the pixel is massively wrong and fails to even consider the difference between raw linear and encoded gamma corrected data in a multitude of differing software products, none you mentioned. You are welcome to believe this, but please don't attempt to pass such misinformation to others. It's not close enough, it's actually very, very far off.

See Fig2

http://digitaldog.net/files/LinearityandGamma.pdf

• Shadow adjusts the level of the lower third of the pixels
  
• Black adjusts the threshhold at the bottom of the curve below which every pixel is considered black.
  

 

See Fig2

http://digitaldog.net/files/LinearityandGamma.pdf

 

Here's figure 2 and again, no, not even close (lower third of pixels), Blacks are not that threshold either:

 

http://digitaldog.net/files/DigicamLinearCapture.jpg

Encoded 6 stops of a raw file, linear distribution is shown above for all pixels.

Did you forget Whites vs. Highlights in ACR/LR too? ;)

Edited December 24, 2020 by digitaldog

Here's figure 2 and again, no, not even close (lower third of pixels), Blacks are not that threshold either:

 

http://digitaldog.net/files/DigicamLinearCapture.jpg

Encoded 6 stops of a raw file, linear distribution is shown above for all pixels.

Did you forget Whites vs. Highlights in ACR/LR too?

Your images in this and other threads don't show as images on my computer, they show as ?.%20Any%20idea%20what%20may%20cause%20this?

Your images in this and other threads don't show as images on my computer, they show as ??

An issue with either display flicker? :eek:

 

NO actual issues:

http://digitaldog.net/files/NoIssueFrans.jpg

An issue with either display flicker? :eek:

 

NO actual issues:

http://digitaldog.net/files/NoIssueFrans.jpg

No, it still shows as an image icon, but no image.

Edited December 24, 2020 by frans_waterlander

No, it still shows as an image icon, but no image.

Yes, it does work, my screen capture proves it does. Not on your side, you've got a problem! And you're in the wrong forum reporting it and searching for help:

Photo.net Site Help

The topics in this forum are digital darkroom, in this thread, the concept of Brightness vs. Shadow recovery.

You could also see the image in figure 2, in the URL provided.

Digital "density" is usually charted against exposure with a log-log scale. That done, and the thirds plus min and max representation is fairly accurate. It doesn't matter that digital capture is technically linear. Humans see on a log-log scale, and that's the basis on which they adjust images. Edited December 24, 2020 by Ed_Ingold

I can only see the images when I right click on the link, then open image in new tab. And surely merely stating that an image in a thread does not show is not reporting an error, merely commenting on an anomaly.

Digital "density" is usually charted against exposure with a log-log scale.

Digital density? Of raw? Or otherwise? Please provide a reference explaining this. And showing:

• Highlight adjusts the level of the top third (approximately) of the pixels**
  

It doesn't matter that digital capture is technically linear.

It does when what you say about the processing of the data isn't even close to what's being processed in that data.

Humans see on a log-log scale, and that's the basis on which they adjust images.

You're telling us now, your statements were about human perception, not the **data being processed, undefined data in undefined software?

Edited December 24, 2020 by digitaldog

Thanks for nothing, Andrew.

“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”

―Sylvia Plath

I can only see the images when I right click on the link, then open image in new tab.

Thanks, Tony, that works for me too. Thanks for nothing, Andrew.

You are welcome Frans for the image I posted, I'm not sure you understand. :(

“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”

―Sylvia Plath

As I've had to remind Frans....

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln

Yes, it does work, my screen capture proves it does. Not on your side, you've got a problem!

Just as not seeing your images is not your problem but someone else's, what one is thought of by someone else is not their problem.

"Don't tell your problems to people: eighty percent don't care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them." -Lou Holtz

And now that Frans can see figure 2, back on topic hopefully.

back on topic hopefully

Good luck with that! As long as the cur keeps barking and attacking, civilized discussions are nearly impossible.