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Paris Musées launches online portal with thousands of historic photographs

22 Jan

Eugène Atget (Jean Eugène Auguste Atget, dit) (Libourne, 12–02–1857 – Paris, 04–08–1927), photographer

Paris Musées, the public institution that manages all of the museums in Paris, has launched a new Collections portal that offers the public access to more than 100,000 high-resolution digital reproductions of classic artwork and photography. All of the content offered in the Collections portal is available under a CC0 license.

In addition to high-resolution images of artwork from such notable names as Rembrandt, the online collection also includes a portal with more than 62,000 high-res photo scans showcasing some of the nation’s earliest photography from photographers that include Pierre Emounts ou Emonds, Eugene Atget, Ernest Charles Appert, Hippolyte Blancard and Roger Henrard.

Maison de Balzac, 16th arrondissement, Paris. Eugène Atget (Jean Eugène Auguste Atget, dit) (Libourne, 12–02–1857 – Paris, 04–08–1927), photographer

Because the photos are all under a CC0 license, anyone can download high-resolution copies of the images alongside documents with full details on the photos, including when and where they were taken, which museum they’re located at and the materials and techniques used to produce each print. The institution will also make copyrighted images from its museums available as low-resolution previews.

In its announcement of the new online collection, Paris Musées explains that it receives a large number of requests from students and others who want to view and/or use some of the images from its museum collections. This portal now makes it possible for anyone to quickly locate and download the content.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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How to Take Stunning Photographs in Night Fog

13 Dec

Fog Photography is an ethereal, atmospheric form of outdoor photography that produces some of the most beautiful photographs. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most difficult to capture. From the wrong exposure to a serious lack of contrast, there are many ways fog photography at night can go wrong. In this post, you’ll learn how to take stunning photographs in Continue Reading

The post How to Take Stunning Photographs in Night Fog appeared first on Photodoto.

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Prime lens update: The Canon EOS M6 Mark II photographs dogs, beer and the big city

26 Oct

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When we first got our hands on the EOS M6 Mark II at Canon’s launch event in Atlanta, we used the 18-150mm F3.5-6.3 kit lens quite a bit – after all, conditions were bright, so we didn’t need super fast apertures, and the zoom reach came in really handy for motorsports photography.

Now that we’re pushing through our full review of the M6 II back in Seattle, we’ve put our two favorite Canon EF-M lenses onto the camera to see how they stack up in front of the all-new 32.5MP sensor. Check out our sample gallery to see for yourself.

See our updated Canon EOS M6 Mark II sample gallery

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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These are the winning photographs of the 2019 Nikon Small World photography competition

25 Oct

2019 Nikon Small World photography competition

The winning photographs of the 2019 Nikon Small World have been revealed, showcasing an incredible collection of shots captured in the contest’s 45th year.

Founded in 1974, Nikon Small World aims ‘to recognize excellence in photography through the microscope’ and ‘is widely regarded as the leading forum for recognizing the art, proficiency and photographic excellence involved in photomicrography,’ in Nikon’s own words. Below is a list of the judges for this year’s competition:

Dr. Denisa Wagner, Edwin Cohn Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and the head of the Wagner Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Rita Strack, Senior Editor at Nature Methods.
Tom Hale, Staff Writer at IFLScience.
Ben Guarino, Science Reporter at The Washington Post.
Eric Clark (Moderator): Research Coordinator and Applications Developer at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University.

Over 2000 entries were submitted for the 2019 competition from scientists in nearly 100 countries. After being ‘evaluated on originality, information content, technical proficiency and visual impact,’ microscopy technician Teresa Zgoda and university graduate Teresa Kugler took home first prize for their incredible capture of a turtle embryo that was created using fluorescence and stereo microscopy. The image is a result of the duo taking hundreds of images and stacking them together to create the final image, ‘as the organism’s size meant only very small parts of the turtle could be imaged on the focal plane at a time,’ according to Nikon’s press release.

We’ve rounded up the top 15 images from the contest and shared them in the following gallery to enjoy. Images and information were kindly provided to DPReview through Nikon Small World.

1st Place

1st Place — Teresa Zgoda & Teresa Kugler, Fluorescent turtle embryo

Location: Campbell Hall, New York, USA

Methodology: Stereomicroscopy, Fluorescence, 5x (Objective Lens Magnification)

2nd Place

2nd Place —Dr. Igor Siwanowicz, Depth-color coded projections of three stentors (single-cell freshwater protozoans)

Location: Ashburn, Virginia, USA

Methodology: Confocal, 40x (Objective Lens Magnification)

3rd Place

3rd Place — Daniel Smith Paredes & Dr. Bhart-Anjan S. Bhullar, Alligator embryo developing nerves and skeleton

Location: New Haven, Connecticut, USA

Methodology: Immunofluorescence, 10x (Objective Lens Magnification)

4th Place

4th Place — Jan Rosenboom, Male mosquito

Location: Rostock, Mecklenburg Vorpommern, Germany

Methodology: Focus stacking, 6.3x (Objective Lens Magnification)

5th Place

5th Place — Caleb Foster, Snowflake

Location: Jericho, Vermont, USA

Methodology: Transmitted Light, 4x (Objective Lens Magnification)

6th Place

6th Place — Javier Rupérez, Small white hair spider

Location: Almáchar, Málaga, Spain

Methodology: Reflected Light, Image Stacking, 20x (Objective Lens Magnification)

7th Place

7th Place — Dr. Guillermo López, Chinese red carnation stamen

Location: Alicante, Spain

Methodology: Focus Stacking, 3x (Objective Lens Magnification)

8th Place

8th Place — Garzon Christian, Frozen water droplet

Location: Quintin, Cotes-d’Armor, France

Methodology: Incident Light, 8x (Objective Lens Magnification)

9th Place

9th Place — Andrei Savitski, Tulip bulb cross section

Location: Cherkassy, Ukraine

Methodology: Reflected Light, 1x (Objective Lens Magnification)

10th Place

10th Place — Jason M. Kirk, BPAE cells in telophase stage of mitosis

Location: Houston, Texas, USA

Methodology: Confocal with Enhanced Resolution, 63x (Objective Lens Magnification)

11th Place

11th Place — Dr. Yujun Chen & Dr. Jocelyn McDonald, A pair of ovaries from an adult Drosophila female stained for F-actin (yellow) and nuclei (green); follicle cells are marked by GFP (magenta)

Location: Manhattan, Kansas, USA

Methodology: Confocal, 10x (Objective Lens Magnification)

12th Place

12th Place — Anne Algar, Mosquito larva

Location: Hounslow, Middlesex, United Kingdom

Methodology: Darkfield, Polarizing Light, Image Stacking, 4x (Objective Lens Magnification)

13th Place

13th Place — Dr. Emilio Carabajal Márquez, Cuprite (mineral composed of copper oxide)

Location: Madrid, Spain

Methodology: Focus Stacking, 20x (Objective Lens Magnification)

14th Place

14th Place — Antoine Franck, Femail Oxyopes dumonti (lynx) spider

Location: Saint Pierre, Réunion

Methodology: Focus Stacking, 1x (Objective Lens Magnification)

15th Place

15thPlace — Marek Mi?, Pregnant Daphnia magna (small planktonic crustacean)

Location: Suwalki, Podlaskie, Poland

Methodology: Modified Darkfield, Polarized Light, Image Stacking, 4x (Objective Lens Magnification)

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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How To Achieve Better High-Key Photographs

08 Sep

The post How To Achieve Better High-Key Photographs appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.

Lighting influences the atmosphere of a photograph. High-key photographs are associated with upbeat, positive feelings.

Using one main key light and avoiding contrast can help you produce photographs that convey a happy mood. This technique is popular with wedding and portrait photographers. It’s also often used in classy advertising campaigns.

How To Make Better High Key Photographs Young Clown

What is your key light?

Your main light source is your key light. It can be light from any source. The sun on a cloudy day is the best natural key light. Artificial light from a portable flash, studio strobes or a continuous light source can also be used. To infuse the right mood, you are best to diffuse the light.

Diffusing your light source scatters the light rays. This reduces the amount of shadow in your pictures. When you have a strong, softened key light, the shadows it casts will be minimal. You can use additional lights or reflectors to lessen the effect of the shadows even more.

To maximize the good-feeling effect, you need to produce photographs with a narrow tone range. The difference between the darkest and lightest areas in your composition should only be a few stops. You must work with the light sources to balance the light ratio.

How To Make Better High Key Photographs Young Woman in the Park

What’s wrong with shadows?

There’s nothing wrong with shadows, but they can imply a heavier mood.

Deep shadows in a photograph are often associated with more somber feelings. Shadows are often used with great effect to convey drama, mystery, and suspense.

Hard edges and high contrast restrict what a viewer can clearly see in a photograph. This lighting technique is often used by photographers and moviemakers to evoke feelings of doubt and mistrust.

Control the light and contrast levels using one diffused key light on your main subject. This produces a nice feeling.

Using one strong, undiffused light produces hard shadows on your subject. This often results in a darker overall feeling.

Use high-key light with the right subject

It’s always best to consider and control the light you use to fit best with your subject.

During the portrait session I had with this young woman, we wanted to create two different moods. One light and happy, the other more serious.

For the high key photo, I used a large softbox on my main studio light and a smaller softbox on my secondary light. This produced a soft, bright wrap around light with little shadow. I also lit the background with two strong lights to add to the happy atmosphere. Obviously, her radiant smile completed the tone of this photograph.

During the same session, I changed the lighting. I used only one light and did not diffuse it. I also turned off the background lights and she turned off her smile.

Had I kept the lighting the same as she posed with the two different expressions, the mood would not have been conveyed so well.

How To Make Better High Key Photographs Cleaning Dispute

How does the background affect high-key photography?

I think the lighter the background is the more upbeat the feeling of a photo can be. But light-colored backgrounds do not have to be used exclusively.

In a photo session with a ceramic artist who wanted really get in touch with her medium, we produced a series of different photos. Some were high-key with a light background. Others we made with a dark background. Some of them I used high-key lighting. In others, I used one undiffused light.

How To Make Better High Key Photographs Clean Ceramic artist

This was one of the first photos in the series before things got dirty. The high-key lighting combined with the light background and another lovely smile produced a light, happy portrait.

Dropping in a dark background and keeping the key light the same. After applying some mud, it resulted in a fun, rather unusual portrait. The mood is certainly different from the dark background. The lighting was basically the same.

Wanting to create a different mood, I then used a single, undiffused light with a more gloomy, contemplative pose.

Pay attention to the shadows

Your key light source will determine the amount and strength of the shadows in your photos. You must pay careful attention to the shadows and ensure they are not too dark. Eliminating or lessening the shadow areas will enhance the effectiveness of your high-key photos.

Using a large, soft light source produces the least amount of shadow. This can be a large softbox on a studio strobe, as I have used in the examples above. You can also make use of sunlight for making high-key photographs.

On cloudy days or when your subject is in the shade, the shadows will tone down more. In full, bright sunshine, the shadows can be problematic. They will be darker and have hard edges. This high contrast will not add to the mood you want to create.

Finding an outdoor location where you can backlight your subject with the sunlight can help produce high-key photos. In situations like this, you’ll need a fill light, which will act as your key light. Even though the sun is brighter, the light you add will be the main light you must take your meter reading from.

How To Make Better High Key Photographs Young Asian Woman Outdoors

Young Clown

Setting your exposure by this light, as I have in the photo above, will result in an overexposed background. I was able to achieve this look because of the white-painted structures close by. They were reflecting light back into her face.

Conclusion

As in all styles of photography, working with the light to create the photos you want is an integral part of the process. The better your lighting is, the better your photos will be.

Experiment and try different light sources to achieve a high-key effect. There are no hard-and-fast rules, and you must work with what you have. Whether you’re in a studio or outdoors, you will face challenges.

How To Make Better High Key Photographs Chicken Nerd

In a studio, you may not have enough room, lights or diffusers. Be creative, think outside the box a little and innovate when you want to make high-key photos.

Do the same outdoors with natural light. Try introducing diffused flash to help balance the light ratio and reduce the shadows. Make use of reflected light bouncing off a wall or building. Carrying a fold-out reflector is also another practical way to help subdue the shadows.

How To Make Better High Key Photographs Strawberry Cheesecake

Give some thought as to how you can create some high-key photos using what you have available to you. You don’t have to photograph people. Food, still life and other subjects can be presented well using high key lighting too.

I’d love to see some in the comments below with a description of how you made them!

The post How To Achieve Better High-Key Photographs appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.

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How to Use Textures to Create Compelling Photographs

19 Mar

The post How to Use Textures to Create Compelling Photographs appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Glenn Harper.

Adding textures to photos is a fun way of creating new pictures. In some respects, it’s not very different to printing your photos onto textured paper or choosing frames for them (or both), except the images needn’t leave your computer. You can do this with photos you’ve already taken, though often it’s best to create them with this treatment in mind.

Cracked earth photo in the background.

Choosing your photos

You can add textures to almost any type of picture, but this method works well with simple photos where there isn’t a lot of fussy detail. Ideally, you need a sizeable single-tone area that allows the background to come through. Otherwise, you can use a simple texture with a complex photo – the important thing is that the two photos do not fight.

A harmless subject, despite appearances.

You can apply this treatment to portraits, landscapes, still lifes, or just about any genre. With still life, you’re at a particular advantage because you can take very simple pictures of subjects against plain backgrounds and then attempt to create something interesting later with a textured background.

Adding textured backgrounds to photos

Melding photos together is not a purist’s approach to photography, but you need only ask yourself one question: do you like the result? Adding a texture to a background is like putting two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together. Do the two parts suit each other? A beneficial side effect of creating these pictures is that you’ll start noticing and shooting all kinds of textures to use with your photos.

Splodges of paint in the background.

Finding and photographing textures

You can create your own backgrounds quite easily by photographing textures around the home. For instance, try capturing textured paper, sandpaper, fences, walls, wood grain, baking trays, tiles, canvas, painted surfaces, rusting surfaces or concrete. Mid-tone textures with contrasting colors or details tend to work better than monotonous dark or bright surfaces.

Silhouetted trees against a blue painted background.

Try screwing up pieces of paper and then flattening them out for backgrounds. You can even use a scanner for paper backgrounds, which has the advantage of holding them flat while still recording the folds and creases.

The same silhouetted trees against brown paper. I wanted to avoid distracting contrast in the paper, so the processing holds off on highlights.

If you want to try this technique and don’t have any texture photographs in your library, you can always grab some to practice with from free photo websites (e.g. https://www.freeimages.com).

A French WW1 Croix de Guerre medal, originally shot against a white card background.

Another possibility is to use the in-built textures offered within image editing programs. Photoshop CC has this to a limited extent. There’s also a good textures section in ON1 Effects (standalone or filter plugin) that offers a lot of choice.

In Photoshop CC you can reveal the “Texture” filter under preferences. It only works on 8-bit images. This is the Canvas texture.

Photoshop Technique (or similar)

To blend textures into backgrounds, you need an editing program that has layers and blending modes. The second usually comes with the first. In brief, you just need to drag one photo on top of the other and adjust the blending mode between the layers to suit. Sometimes you might need to tweak opacity.

Here’s a more precise workflow:

Open the two images you intend to merge (i.e. subject and textured background).
Ensure that the texture image is the same size as the main photo or slightly larger. If it is much larger (e.g. a full-sized file layered onto a web image), it will appear less sharp.
Using the move tool in Photoshop, drag the texture image onto the main photo. This automatically creates a second layer (“Layer 1”).
Try the various layer blending modes in your layers palette until you find one that suits the image. “Overlay” is one that often works well.
Adjust opacity to taste. If you want to strengthen the effect rather than fade it, you can duplicate Layer 1.
Merge the layers (Ctrl + E) or Flatten Image.

You can do this the other way round and drag the main image onto the texture, but then the opacity slider becomes less useful. You ideally want to be able to fade the texture effect rather than the main photo. Also, if the texture file is larger, having that one on top avoids the need to crop the image afterwards.

Adding textured backgrounds to photos

Using the Brush Tool

Another thing you can do with your textures is to selectively paint parts of the effect out of or into the picture. You might do this if, for instance, you want to create the illusion that an object within the photo is resting on a textured background without being part of it.

Using a ON1 Effects texture I’ve created henna-type markings on the hand and used the brush tool to remove the same pattern from the watch.

To do this, you need to create a layer mask on “Layer 1” (your texture photo). Then, making sure the brush foreground color is black – visible in the tools palette – you use the brush tool at 100% opacity to selectively paint the texture out. Hitting “X” lets you paint detail back in again if you get clumsy.

Alternatively, you can do the opposite and create a black layer mask, painting texture into the picture with a white brush.

Harmony

I mentioned earlier choosing textures and photos that suit each other. So, what might that mean? Ultimately, you get to decide what goes well with what, but some textures intrinsically suit some subjects. For instance, old books generally go better with leather, paper or card textures than they do with a brick wall. Metallic objects might go well with rust or oxidation.

Another ON1 Effects texture (rice paper).

With human subjects, you might want to infer something else altogether, like cracks for old age or the passing of time. Be careful who you use that on! The bolder the texture is, generally the more limited it is in its potential. You can use paper and canvas textures on almost anything because of their photographic and artistic connection and their unobtrusiveness.

Express yourself

Any picture you produce on a computer rather than in camera will likely attract a degree of cynicism. That’s just the way photography is. But it’s not always healthy to be confined by your chosen craft and feel like you’re not doing anything new. Blending photos in Photoshop is creative, fun and even a little beneficial, since an eye for juxtaposition is a valid photographic skill.

Antique Vaseline pots against an old baking tray surface.

Get ready for the strange looks you’ll receive when you begin photographing plain walls and fences. Use a tripod for extra eccentricity ….

Feel free to share your creations in the comments section below.

The post How to Use Textures to Create Compelling Photographs appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Glenn Harper.

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Review: Seagate 14tb Ironwolf Disks for all of Your Photographs

06 Mar

The post Review: Seagate 14tb Ironwolf Disks for all of Your Photographs appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Sime.

Which Hard Disk For Photography

The Seagate 14TB Ironwolf hard disks

Recently I was offered the opportunity to try out a pair of the Seagate 14tb Ironwolf hard disks. If you have read any of my previous articles about storage, drives, and NAS (Network Attached Storage) for photographers, you’ll know one thing about me; I consider spinning media hard drives to be either “Dead or Dying from the moment they’re powered up.” This is mostly true.

These devices have what is called an MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) meaning they can’t just spin forever. While reviewing disks is great, I wanted to find a good use for the pair of storage monsters aside from saying, “yes, they work just like a disk should!” (Which they do, but…)

So, after thinking about having to move house, and how much room I wouldn’t have, I found the PERFECT use! Physical down-sizing of my NAS.

Works well for small spaces

I primarily use a Synology DS1517+ as my main NAS, and a cute little DS216 as my backup. Well, I did until December!

I had to close my office for renovation and move everything into a nook that is only 106cm wide and about 137cm deep. This move meant I had to custom re-make the top of my stand-up desk (I’m getting old, it’s a necessity!), and the shelf for my working storage. My working storage includes my directly connected Promise R8 and my G-Technology 8TB main image drive, as well as my NAS that I use to deliver client images. It also includes backups of all of the computers and devices in the house, as well as for media that streams to the TV. The 1517+ simply wouldn’t fit along with everything else on the shelf.

So, I thought “I need to downsize, but maintain the storage space on my NAS!” Enter stage left, the behemoth Seagate Ironwolf 14tb disks.

I wasn’t joking about the super-small office space!

And my “Storage Shelf”

Spin rate

The Seagate units are a regular 3.5″ internal hard drive, like what you’d have inside your desktop computer. They spin at 7200RPM and have a 3-year warranty. That MTBF thing I was talking about earlier, the 14tb Ironwolf disk is rated at 1 Million hours (Yes, I said that in a Dr Evil voice!) Which is quite a while! (Before you whip out your calculator, that’s 114.155251 years)

So, if you turned the thing on and left it spinning in a controlled environment, not doing anything, it’d be rated to last that long.

Real world, this isn’t how it goes; we read and write to these disks over and over, and they can get jostled around and sometimes even unexpectedly powered off (Dad! What does this switch do?!)

Synolgy Seagate 14TB Ironwolf Review Photography

Setting up the Seagate Ironwolf 14tb disks

Moving swiftly on, out came the pair of Seagate Ironwolf 4tb disks and in went the 14tb disks. No mess, and no fuss. The Synology NAS is very well made and easy to work on.

I wanted to have some level of protection (fault tolerance) using the two disks, so they’re set up using SHR (Synology Hybrid Raid) which gives me 1-disk tolerance. It pretty much halves my space, but essentially means that if something goes wrong, it can go wrong twice before I cry to the sky and ask nobody in particular “WHY?”!

I worked in I.T. long enough to see grown men (and women) cry when disks failed. It isn’t pretty. So, backup! (You’ve been warned.)

I’m finding the disks nice and quiet, despite being only 15cm to my left. They have not skipped a beat (remember that bit I said about dead or dying disks) to date (They have about 100 years before that nasty MTBF rating even gets close!)

I happily leave the NAS on 24/7 as I’ve found another location for my other network attached storage box, which means the two can sit quietly at night talking to each other via the internet and sync my important client data! Great!

The new 14TB IronWolf drive also supports Seagate’s leading IronWolf Health Management (IHM) software. Designed to operate on enabled Synology DiskStation NAS, Asustor NAS, and QNAP NAS when populated with Seagate IronWolf or IronWolf Pro drives, IHM improves the overall system reliability by displaying actionable prevention, intervention or recovery options for the user.

These specific disks aren’t exactly inexpensive due to their size, but you can get them from 1tb to 14tb based on how much data you produce and need to store and share.

Conclusion

I can’t give a hard disk a rating out of 5 as I typically do, not for at least a year of spinning. However, based on my other Seagate disks, these new ones will do just fine! Also, the Synology DS units are five stars all the way!

The post Review: Seagate 14tb Ironwolf Disks for all of Your Photographs appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Sime.

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WikiShootMe shows you nearby Wikipedia items in need of photographs

30 Jan

If there ever comes a time when you’re out of subjects to photograph — or you have a few free hours between shoots — take a look at WikiShootMe, a web app that uses your location to display points of interest on Wikipedia that are in need of photographs.

Hosted by Wikimedia Toolforge, WikiShootMe works by asking permission to use your current location based on your IP address. Once given permission through the browser, it displays a map provided by OpenStreetMap overlaid with different colored dots, each of which coordinates with a Wikipedia article.

Depending on the color of the dot — green, red, blue or yellow — WikiShootMe lets you know whether a photo has been taken for a specific article and what the priority is on getting one in place. Below is a legend provided in WikiShootMe’s help page:

Larger, green circles represent Wikidata items with an image
Larger, red circles represent Wikidata items without an image
Smaller, blue circles represent Commons images
Smaller, yellow circles represent Wikipedia articles, in the current language edition (see the language selector in the upper-right corner)

To upload images, you must first create a MediaWiki account and authorize it for uploading content. Once authorized, you’re free to upload content with the help of WikiShootMe. Images uploaded will automatically list you as the copyright holder under the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license.

To take WikiShootMe for a spin, head to the web app. It works on both desktop and mobile devices, meaning you’re free to upload DSLR or mobile photos.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Video: ‘The Terrible History of Photographs’ as told by puppets

20 Jan

There are plenty of videos on YouTube that dive into the history of photography. But few will make you laugh like this one will.

This tongue-in-cheek video, created by YouTube channel Glove and Boots, shares The Terrible History of Photographs using puppets, a la Sesame Street.

The video comes in just under five minutes and in that time both Glove and Boots (as well as their gorilla friend) explain a very basic, cynical look at how photography got to where it is today and the terrible, no good, awful technology that camera before smartphones.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs

27 Oct

Want to know how to balance exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to improve your photographs without causing white or black clippings?

Have you ever faced a scene so contrasted that it’s impossible to achieve balance in the exposure?

If you shoot in Auto mode, you may have seen this quite a bit. If you were not able to solve this problem while shooting, this is the tutorial for you. I’ll show you how to balance exposure in Adobe Camera Raw using helpful post-processing techniques.

For this exercise, I’m using a photo with extreme problems to really highlight the adjustments I’m making. Images with less-obvious exposure problems can still be improved using this same technique.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Before and After Comparison

Firstly, let’s clarify that this works best with a RAW file, but even if you shoot in JPG format this tutorial can help – so keep reading!

A RAW file is a ‘digital negative’ that contains all the information without being processed, so it won’t open directly in Photoshop. Instead, it opens in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), which is where the editing is done for this tutorial.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Open File

If you are working with a JPG file, open the ACR manually. To do this, go to Photoshop ->Menu -> File -> Open. From the browser window choose your JPG file and select ‘Camera Raw’ from the ‘Format’ drop-down menu. Click ‘OK’ to open in ACR.

If you are not sure whether to shoot with RAW files or JPG Files, read this interesting article.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Open JPG File

*From this point, you can follow the same steps for both RAW and JPG files.

Activate your clipping warnings

To help balance your image, activate the clipping warning in ACR.

To do this, go to the top corners of the histogram where you have a white and black clipping alert. Click on the one you want to view first.

Once activated, this highlights any pixels that exceed the intensity represented.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Activate Warnings

The Shadow Slider

The order in which you decide to tackle different problems doesn’t matter. You have to go back and forward through the adjustments until you reach the balance that works for you anyway.

In this case, I’m going to start brightening up the bottom, so my first instinct would be to lighten the shadows.

Adjust the ‘shadows’ slider until you achieve the desired look.

Look at the changes to the histogram as well.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Shadows

The Black Slider

Now we can see much more detail in the lower part of the photo, but now the contrast has lowered so much that the image has become quite flat. You can correct this by moving the ‘Black’ slider, which determines the darkest black of your image.

Adjust the ‘Black’ slider and see how the darkest areas are now being highlighted in blue to show you the clipping areas because you’re exceeding the range.

Be careful not to exaggerate.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Blacks

The White Slider

Now it’s time to fix the lightest parts. The sky is completely blown out and has little detail; therefore I’ll lower the brightest white possible by moving the ‘White’ slider.

Adjust the ‘White’ slider until you achieve the desired look.

Notice how the red spot in the sky that represented the clippings is getting smaller.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Whites

The Highlights Slider

The image looks better but it hasn’t completely solved the problem.

The next step is the ‘Highlights’ slider to add more detail to it. Be careful not to render the image too dark now.

Adjust the ‘Highlights’ slider until you achieve the look you want.

You’ll need to go back to the Shadows and Blacks to balance them according to the new sky. You can go back and forth through these until you find a balance you are happy with.

Notice how all the clippings have gone:

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Histogram

Before and After Previews

Apart from the clippings you canals keep an eye on the histogram, look how the original had very high points in both ends and was very flat in the middle while the current one is much more balanced.

To view before and after previews, press the P on your keyboard, allowing you to make comparisons without losing any of your adjustments.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Before Preview

Balance is not necessarily all there is to it.

In this case, it resulted in a flat and muted image.

To give it that extra punch you can boost areas such as contrast or saturation.

Keep in mind that these can create clippings again, so always keep checking the entire image.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Preview

If you worked through this process with a RAW file, it is non-destructive, so you can keep editing until you’re satisfied without losing any pixels or lowering the image quality.

Due to the JPG file being a destructive process, I advise you to save it as a copy to always keep your original intact.

If you want to learn more about the basics of ACR, I invite you to read my tutorial ‘Quick Beginner’s Guide to Processing RAW Files in Photoshop Adobe Camera Raw‘.

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