Good tut on lightening images in CS or PSP?

[Candice]

Is there a good tutorial on lightening images in PSCS or PSP ? I have AutoFX Auto Eye but it seems to mess with the quality of the photo. see picture attached.

[DownByFive]

Is there a good tutorial on lightening images in PSCS or PSP ? I have AutoFX Auto Eye but it seems to mess with the quality of the photo. see picture attached.

There's actually lots of different ways to brighten up an image, but figuring out the best one is tough, because different photos require different types of brightening. One thing I've learned recently is Levels...If you learn to read the histogram and adjust Levels, you'll find you won't need a lot of other adjustments.

I just really quickly messed with your example...I sort of overdid the brightening on purpose, just to show what a difference a little Levels adjustment can do. In the one on the left I adjusted the whole picture, which kinda washed out the blue in the background (you could sort of correct it with the Burn tool, but it may look a little sketchy). In the one on the right I just selected the flower areas and did roughly the same adjustment, but avoided washing out the background color. Forgive me if this isn't the advice you were looking for...

I guess the moral of my rant is to just read up on Histograms and Levels, either in the PSCS/PSP onboard tutorials, or just through Google, it's actually a pretty simple concept once you get the hang of it.

[another view]

Scott Kelby has some really good, easy to follow books - look for Adobe Photoshop CS for Digital Photographers. It's more of a "recipe book" telling you how to fix a problem quickly rather than going thru the theory behind how and why he does what he does.

This is one example of using the histogram in the camera too. It's probably the most important tool that digital capture brings to photography (really).

From your shot, we would see that the histogram probably had most of the data towards the middle of it. Since the middle is equivalent to middle grey and you have a white subject, you could tell instantly that it was underexposed. By adding some exposure compensation (probably +.5 to +1 here) you would move the peak in the histogram to the right, which is the highlight end of the scale. It's important not to cut off either the left or right end of the histogram because you'll lose data outside the ends. This will result in blown highlights or shadows with no detail. Some situations it's unavoidable, but you will know instantly by looking at the histogram what you've got (and what you don't!).

I'm making these guesses of what the histogram looks like but not downloading your image to see it. I don't need to (not trying to sound arrogant) because I've worked with it enough to know how the histogram represents the final image. It's nearly impossible to tell if your exposure is good on the LCD screen on the camera. The histogram will tell you the math - what the image really will look like. It will take a little getting used to, but it's well worth the effort.