From the course: Photo Tools Weekly

Fixing overexposure with Camera Raw, part 1

From the course: Photo Tools Weekly

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Fixing overexposure with Camera Raw, part 1

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- Hello and welcome to another episode of Photo Tools Weekly. A few weeks back, I showed you an example of how we can take a single file, and using raw processing, how we can create multiple exposures in order to craft a look with that image. Well, after that episode I received a handful of emails saying "Chris, that was fascinating, but how can I use that technique in a more complicated situation?" Where it isn't about crafting a look, but where it's about fixing a problem like overexposure. So in this week's episode, we're going to tackle that question. How can we fix overexposure with a single frame, and how can we do that by creating multiple exposures? We'll be working with a photograph that I captured of my brother-in-law and his bride on their big day, so it's an important photograph that I need to fix. And let's take a look at how we can fix overexposure in this unique way. Here it goes. Let's dive right in. For this project, the first step will be to look at how we can raw process the image, then open it up as a smart object. Now we could do this with Bridge in Camera Raw or Lightroom. So let me show you both. If we're in Bridge, what we would do is go to File and then choose Open in Camera Raw. This would give us a Camera Raw dialogue. We could adjust our settings. Then, down here, rather than clicking on Open Image, if you hold down the Shift key, it changes that so that it now reads Open Object. That gives us the ability to open what's called a smart object. And that's what we would want to do for this technique if we were using Bridge in Camera Raw. All right, well, next let me show you how this would work if we were using a tool like Lightroom. With Lightroom, same kind of workflow. We would go over and we would work on some of the settings here. Let me just zoom in a little bit on this one, see if I can find a zoom rate that looks a little bit more manageable. And what I want to do with this is eventually fix the overexposure that we have here on my brother-in-law Pete's head right there. So we'll go ahead and I'm going to drop some of this down, modify a little bit of my settings here. And in trying to find the right way to process this. One of the things that I notice is that, no matter how far I go, I can't really get that far enough. So I'm going to leave it a little bit high and then fix that later in Photoshop. And what we'll do is, after we've processed the image here inside of Lightroom, we'll open this up as a smart object. And how do we do that? Well, let me show you. What you do is you go to the Photo pull down menu, choose Edit In, then rather than just selecting Edit in Photoshop up here, you choose Open as Smart Object in Photoshop. We'll go ahead and click on that. This will then apply these raw settings inside of Lightroom to the image, send it over to Photoshop, but once it's open in Photoshop, what we'll notice is that the layer looks a little bit different. So again, you can see here we have this icon right here. Let me make that a little bit larger for you. You can see that icon and what that's telling me is that this is a smart object layer. Now what does that mean? What that means is if I double-click this here, it will re-open the raw controls. You can see here all of my raw settings. I can then say, well, hey, what if I modify these a little bit? And then click okay to apply them. And just applies those and then sends it back to Photoshop here. So it's like we have Camera Raw tucked inside of the file here inside of Photoshop, which is great. Now how does this relate to fixing this exposure that we have with this image? Well, what we can do is we can create a copy of this layer and have two different versions, two different raw processed versions, of the files inside of our layers document. But we have to do this correctly. First, let me show the incorrect way. If I simply just duplicate this layer, and double-click here, what we'll see is we have our raw controls. And let me make a dramatic change just to illustrate the point. Then I'll click okay. Next what we can see is, it changed the new layer, but also the old one. So it didn't really work, right? So rather than doing that, let me step backwards. Command options Z on a Mac or CTRL ALT Z on Windows. Rather than doing that, what you need to do is to right click or CTRL click the layer. So we go to the layer, we right click or CTRL click it. In this contextual menu, we want to choose the option which is New Smart Object via Copy. Go ahead and select that. It looks just the same. But what's happened is that these two layers are no longer connected. So, for example, if I go up here and double-click this to re-open the raw controls and make some sort of adjustment, in this case with saturation. What we'll now see is that the top layer is black and white, but the bottom layer is in color. Okay, great. Well, that essentially has set the stage for us so that we now have two versions of this raw file inside of our Photoshop document, which can really help out when it comes to fixing exposure. The next step, of course, is to ask yourself, well, how can we actually fix that exposure? Well, it will involve using Camera Raw and also some adjustment layers. So let's go ahead and take a look at how we can do that in the next movie.

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