Picture Recovery with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

May 29th, 2007 |

Author: Pete

As I mentioned, the prom pictures I was able to capture were less than perfect. Lots of blown out highlights and overpowering shadows really detracted from the shots. I decided to give Adobe Photoshop Lightroom a try to see if it could fix them. I gave the program a quick once over a little while ago and thought the Exposure and Highlight Recovery functions might be my friends.

Simply put, Lightroom is amazing! It’s not a replacement to Photoshop by any means, but it’s a far simpler way to make color adjustments to images. I would assume a lot of what’s in Lightroom is in Photoshop CS3 which leads to me believe this might actually be a version I would like to have. Now if people would just buy my images I could have the super cool new version.

But anyway, Lightroom works differently than I expected. You open the image and are presented with a histogram and several sliders that adjust the exposure, highlights, vibrance/saturation and several other sliders. As you click in the histogram you will be shown which slider adjust that portion, this way you know exactly which adjustments you need to make. Of course, all changes are done in real time; as you adjust the slider, the image changes. You can easily see if you need to make heavier adjustments or ease back on your changes.

My goal was to tone down the harsh highlights and bring back some of the washed out color of the pictures. The sun was making a black tux look grayish and the same for my daughters black dress. Plus, the grass looked almost dead the way the sun was shining off of it.

I changed the exposure, added some fill light, add some highlight recovery, brought out detail in the shadows and increased the color saturation all within a few minutes. I have two monitors hooked up to this machine, so I stretched Lightroom across both so I could see the Before and After comparisons. I was keenly impressed to have the original image on the left monitor and adjust the image on the right monitor in real time. It was so easy to see my changes and their effects without getting that tunnel vision of seeing the image change slowly and not noticing when you’ve gone too far.

Within a few minutes I’d adjusted the image to the point where I was happy with the results. I’d toned down the harsh highlights on my daughters face, brought out the details on the side that was covered in shadows and brought the colors back from being washed out.

The difference between the two images was striking! I was amazed at how much detail I had recovered and how much improvement had been made.

I loaded up a dozen more images and I was able to perform the same miracle on each one. Instead of blown out images I now had a series of images that really captured the moment. If you want to have a look, here if the Before image and here if the After image.

I’m sure a lot of what Lightroom does can be done in other applications as well, however, this was so simple and quick it’s hard to image you could do the same thing so easily. For those of us who aren’t Photoshop gurus and don’t get to work with it all day long, Lightroom may be the answer. I’m still on the 30 day trial, but it’s really hard to say no to such a powerful tool.

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Picture Recovery with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

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