Rescuing Photos with Poor Exposure
One of the common problems people have
with photos is exposure. I've done this myself: I have the camera
set for indoor photos and then forget to change the setting
to take some photos outside in bright light, or I take an outdoor
shot without using fill flash and the faces of my subjects are
shadowed. 
What if you have a one-of-a-kind shot of
a family gathering or of your children at the beach, but it
is badly exposed? Before you press that delete button, consider
how you can rescue the shot. The"auto exposure"
tool usually does it for minor corrections, but if you have
a really tough photo you need to go a step further.
Most good photo editing programs (like ACDSee
and Photoshop Elements)
offer the ability to make manual adjustments to the exposure
using the "curves" tool.
- In your editing software, select the
curves tool and click and drag the exposure grid until you
are happy with the results. See photo at right.
- When using the curves tool, some programs
will give you an exposure warning and will show areas that
become too dark or too light. You may have to allow for
some shadow detail to be lost or some highlights to be a
bit overblown in order to get the best exposure on the most
important parts of the picture.
- Don't be afraid with experimenting with
this tool, or any other of the editing tools. If you don't
like the results you can always revert back to the original,
which you backed up :)
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