Exposure

Exposure represents the amount of light in a photo. An overexposed photo is too light and appears washed out. An underexposed photo is dark and shadowy. Exposure may also be off in just the light areas, resulting in burned out highlights, or in just the dark areas, resulting in featureless shadows. You can independently fix brightness, highlights, shadows, or any combination of the three.

In the following example, the exposure is off because of the bright light coming from the door behind the subjects.

exposure_brightnessBrightness

You can adjust overall brightness, which will lighten or darken the entire photo.

Notice that although the women in the photo appear clearer, the light from the door appears flashed out.

exposure_shadowsHighlights

You can also adjust the highlights. This option darkens just the lightest parts of the photo. Photos may need highlight correction if the subject was too close to the flash.

In this photo, highlight correction darkens the bright light from the door, bringing out more detail in the balloon and trees, which are completely washed out when overall brightness is increased.

exposure_highlightsShadows

Likewise, you can adjust Shadows. This option enhances detail in just the darkest parts of the photo. Note that while you start to see detail that was previously invisible, you’ll also notice some speckling, or “digital noise”.

In the sample photo, shadow correction brings out detail in the two women.

exposure_comboExposure Fixed

Sometimes a combination of two or more options will give the best final results. In this sample photo, both Shadows and Highlights were adjusted for a perfect photo result.