If I didn’t have Photoshop, almost all of my photos would look terribly underexposed on my pages! It happens to all of us, photographing indoors without wanting to use flash because that flattens the face of our subject so much, or even with flash, with the flash just exposing one part of the photo. Or taking photos outside on a cloudy day, even those who master their photography skills still get underexposed photos now and then. And by all means, I am not a professional photographer. Even though I try to practice and learn a lot about it, I still have a long way to go and 90% of my photos end up being tweaked in Photoshop!
There are many, many ways to enhance your photos in Photoshop and once you get the hang of it, it is so much fun to play and experiment with them! Today I’d like to learn you a couple of tricks to ’save’ an underexposed photo.
Here’s a good example of one:
1. The first thing you should always do when tweaking photos, is to duplicate your photo, so you can always turn back to your original if you mess up. To do this, in the top menu go to Image>Duplicate. Name your new document, or leave the name_copy Photoshop is giving it by default. Then close the original.
2. Now, with the copy of your photo selected, go to Image>Levels. In the window that opens, you see some kind of graph that resembles the histogram of your photo, which, on some cameras, is already visible at the moment you take the shot (on your camera). This graph represents the values of black, grey and white (and all shades inbetween) in your photo. A good photo should have a well balanced graph. This is what the levels of my photo look like (yours will look different, so you might need to adjust the next steps according to your preferences):
Notice the 3 little triangles (which are actually sliders) underneath the graph? There’s a black one, a grey one and a white one. As you can see, my photo has a lot of blacks, a WHOLE lot of greys and NO whites. This is not a well balanced photo AT ALL.
Those sliders are very powerful tools. Let’s move the white slider towards the beginning of the ‘peaks’ and see what happens.
The whites are becoming much brighter now, and the slider of the greys has moved along. This is looking a little better already, but now the whites have this large peak, resulting in the most white parts of our photo being too bright compared to the other areas. I’m going to move the slider of the whites a little bit back, just after the big peak.
This looks a little more balanced, although the photo is still underexposed. Don’t worry about that. We’ll fix that in the next step. Click OK.
3. Now let’s work some blending magic! In the layers palette, copy the layer of your photo. You can do that by dragging the layer to the little ‘new layer’ icon at the bottom of the layer’s palette. (if you don’t see the bottom of your layers palette, drag in somewhere higher on your screen)
You now see two layers containing your photo.
Make sure the top layer is selected. In the top menu of your layer palette you see a box where it says ‘Normal’. This is where the fun begins 
Click on the little black arrow next to Normal. Now you see a whole lot of ‘blending options’. Each option will blend the top layer with the bottom layer in its own way. Go ahead and check what each option does to your photo.
When you’re done experimenting, we’re going to settle for the Screen mode.
This looks a little too light now, in most cases. We want the screen blend, but not that pronounced. So we are going to lower the opacity of this layer, to make the effect less strong. Next to the box where it says Opacity, click the little black arrow and move the slider until you’re happy with the result. I’m setting mine at 68%, but that may vary on your photo.
This is already looking good, but the screen blend has also made the colors in my photo a little too pale. I’m going to fix that by adding another blend layer.
4. Duplicate your bottom layer (the one called background) again by dragging it to the ‘new layer’ icon. Now set the blending mode to Soft Light. This makes the colors pop.
Again, the effect is too strong, so lower the opacity of this layer again, until you’re happy with the results. I’m setting mine at 36%
That’s it! Now go to Layer>Merge layers. You’re done!
This is the before and after:
5. But I’m not quite yet I’ve noticed, in my photo, that the darker whites at the top of my photo have this blue-ish shine. It bothers me. I’m going to fix that by adding a warming filter to my photo. If you ever encounter the same problem, here’s how to do it: go to Image>Adjustments>Photo Filter. Choose the Warming Filter 85. Lower the density until the blue shades turn into shades of white (or grey). Pay attention, in most cases you don’t want an orange glow to your photo, so don’t set the density too high! I’m setting mine at 14%
See what this last step did to my final photo?
You could also apply a cooling filter (which is blue) if your photo has a yellow or orange glow, like when you took your photo in artifical light. That’ll neutralize the yellow.
I’d like to know if you find this tutorial helpful! Or if you have any questions, please post in the comments.
