How to Fix an Underexposed PhotoWhile it's much better to avoid taking an underexposed photo to start with, it does happen. Getting a good photo exposure is more desirable because it assures you of the best quality photo. If a picture is not too dark, we can correct at least to some extent Fortunately, there is an abundance of software to help us when we do our photo editing. It's not too hard to fix a picture that is only slightly too dark. In this example illustration, the top photo was taken using an auto exposure setting on the camera.
The lower photo was adjusted for exposure and color temperature in Photoshop. You can see it is brighter and a more desirable color. Photo Editing software: Picasa is a free program that you can download from www.Picasa.com Depending on how good it is, the software that came with your camera is usually simple to use and will do a good job in many situations. The only hard part of course may be learning more new software. Many have an auto correct button that will analyze your dark photo and make adjustments with one click. I am not a big fan of them as I like complete control over highlights, shadows and mid tones. Most people will have good success with these. There are at least 3 ways to adjust a dark photo in many of the photo editing software programs.
Getting the best photo exposure is the ideal thing to do. If our photographic image is not too far off from the desired brightness, we can use a variety of techniques to correct our underexposed photo. Back from Underexposed Photo to Digital Photo Editing |
Auto exposure assumes that the subject is an average scene with a mix of some light and dark areas. For the snow scene, most of the photos should be very bright, close to a pure white brightness. If the camera had been set to overexpose an f-stop or 2, the photo would have actually been exposed properly.