Photoshop experts help!

[Christopher E. Kincaid]

I have this picture that I took this week. I really think it is cool except I want to lighten the left side to show the wall cloud a little better and darken the right side to show the Cu tail in better detail. When I adjust the contrast it either darkens the left side or makes the right side too bright. I tried using levels and curves but only made the picture look fake. Your advice is greatly apprieciated!

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3042/2691734361_c8f13cdbf3_o.jpg

[Eric Flescher]

I have worked with photoshop for several years but I far from an expert. I really think the left side looks fine but the right side looks overexposed. I think you you need to do a mask over the right side to bring out those definitions and not darken the left. A mask with curves etc would be good. I am sure others will chime in with more specifics. I will look in more of my stuff to see if there are other specifics
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I have this picture that I took this week. I really think it is cool except I want to lighten the left side to show the wall cloud a little better and darken the right side to show the Cu tail in better detail. When I adjust the contrast it either darkens the left side or makes the right side too bright. I tried using levels and curves but only made the picture look fake. Your advice is greatly apprieciated!

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3042/2691734361_c8f13cdbf3_o.jpg

[Jim Tang]

Yes, I agree... a layer mask with curves would work very well here. There might be better methods but I'm really not an expert.

Did some quick work...

I brightened up one layer and darkened another, then applied a gradient over a layer mask.

http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/5637/updatedpicjs3.jpg

[Jim Saueressig]

Remember you can never bring back blowouts but you can bring out some under exposure.

Image / Adjustments / Shadow Highlights

I am no expert however. :)

[Terry Tyler]

there are several different ways to approach editing this photo, chris...but let me begin by saying that this is a challenging image to edit, atleast for me anyway...some pictures are easier then others to edit, so i usually take some pictures with different settings on the actual camera, that way i have a couple different versions to be working with...

in this photo, which is pretty clean by the way, i began by using a simple lightning effect...i would use that with caution, cause sometimes you can overdo a picture and it wont look good...in this case, i put the light to the left of the wall cloud so it lightened up the wall cloud a little bit, while at the same time reducing the lighting of the CU...

http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n9/wxchaser420/hh.jpg

after that, you can do the curves or play with the levels a little bit...like i said though, its a pretty challenging image to edit...

[Christopher E. Kincaid]

Thanks for all of your good advice everyone! I will play around with the picture some more after work, trying each of your suggestions. I took that shot at ISO-200. Maybe I should have used a different ISO? I took 3 more quick shots after this picture and left because I thought it might drop a tornado behind those trees. Instead it merged with a cell to the west and went all outflow on me. :(

Terry Tyler: I find pic with extremes in darkness and light to be the toughest too. I have been able to do some good work on some of my other chase pic sets based on advice here.

Here is another problem that I have: enhancing distant lightning. I just can't seen to do it! below are two good examples:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3008/2692547682_3e1f72c3c3_o.jpg

Lightning is in the lower left under a different cell.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3102/2701203702_626d32ba63_b_d.jpg

Here is a link to a real tough one. It is full-sized because that is the only way to see the bolt. It is near the right hand point of the shelf (actually openning wall cloud). Good luck with this one!

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3190/2700384433_bd0b3c5423_b_d.jpg

Here is a link to my attempt. Maybe there is no way to make it more visible... People find this shot more impressive than some of my tornado pics.

[Christopher E. Kincaid]

Nice picture Paul! I will try your idea and thanks for the compliment...

[Ryan McGinnis]

Thanks for all of your good advice everyone! I will play around with the picture some more after work, trying each of your suggestions. I took that shot at ISO-200. Maybe I should have used a different ISO? I took 3 more quick shots after this picture and left because I thought it might drop a tornado behind those trees. Instead it merged with a cell to the west and went all outflow on me. :(


Changing the ISO wouldn't have helped much in this instance -- the camera's metering system would still have tried to produce the photo you ended up with. What would have worked would have been to have manually decreased the exposure of the photo. There are many ways to do this, though the easiest way to do it on most cameras is to looked for something called "Exposure compensation" -- and to dial it down a number.

Another thing you can do is shoot RAW. With a RAW file, you actually can recover blown out areas like that in the post processing (to an extent).

[Christopher E. Kincaid]

Changing the ISO wouldn't have helped much in this instance -- the camera's metering system would still have tried to produce the photo you ended up with. What would have worked would have been to have manually decreased the exposure of the photo. There are many ways to do this, though the easiest way to do it on most cameras is to looked for something called "Exposure compensation" -- and to dial it down a number.

Another thing you can do is shoot RAW. With a RAW file, you actually can recover blown out areas like that in the post processing (to an extent).

I actually took the shot at ISO-400. I do take in RAW, now. When I first got my camera I just took JPEGs then both RAW and JPEGs. I like playing with my pics in PS when there are in the RAW format, though I have a lot to learn.