Rescue photos with basic editing in Lightroom

Rescue photos with basic editing in Lightroom

How many times when you are out and about with your camera, do you see a scene and think how lovely, so you take a photo, only to be disappointed with the results.

If you look at the photos below you will see that these have suffered with the above scenario.

This is why you should never just delete a photo, because with a few simple adjustments in a photo editor, in this case Lightroom, you can rescue your photos*. I have only made a few simple adjustments to the basics section in the develop module to correct these photos.
This is just using a single RAW file and no HDR processing.




In this first example, the camera has exposed for the sky, and you can see the rocks in the before side are virtually black. The after image gives a more balanced natural look. Using the shadows slider, along with the others in the basics tab, helps retrieve those details.




The second example shows a more balanced foreground but overexposed on the sky. Again, without HDR process, some simple adjustments in the Lightroom basics tab fixes this. Dragging the highlights slider will bring out the details in the sky with some adjusts of just the basics sliders.




This final example, the camera seems to have got it wrong all over the place and more manual intervention should have been used, never the less, using the same techniques as above, this photo has been saved.

This process is just one of the things I teach in my 1-to-1 sessions. I cover importing, cataloging, editing and exporting.

*there are limits to what can be recovered, and less can be recovered with JPEG files over RAWs.

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