You took out your camera, focused, and clicked a photograph without checking the settings. Unfortunately, the lifeless picture you see later on your PC shows that the camera had been manually set for a different type of light situation.

THE PROBLEM: A member of the CHIP photo team once captured the beautiful ambience of clouds in the sky with the help of a wide-angle lens. But the picture was completely underexposed causing the colors to be lifeless. Another problem was that due to the extreme setting of the lens, the horizon looked bent out of shape.

PHOTOGRAPH DIFFERENTLY:

It’s not just faulty manual settings that produce such results—even some fully automatic cameras have a dull light problems with subjects of this type. The best thing would be to try out several options. For landscape shots, the AV mode ‘aperture priority’ is suitable. Set a high aperture value in order to obtain a high depth of field. If the exposure of the camera is short, ensure a longer exposure time for a result like the second picture.

All SLR cameras and many compact models with a manual mode offer suitable setting options. Since assessing the picture on the camera display is naturally difficult due to the surrounding light, the best thing to do is to take plenty of pictures of the same subject with different parameters. Many devices can do that automatically using an apertur range.

PHOTO OPTIMIZATION ON THE PC:

Weak spots in a picture can be removed on the PC. Using ‘Image I Adjustments I Levels’ in Photoshop, you can identify whether the photo is underexposed—in the example at hand, the tonal value is accumulated in the left half of the picture. Drag the white regulator from the right edge to the middle—spreading the tone like this considerably brightens the picture. At the same time, it enhances the colors. However, use caution in doing this. In case of intense brightening, even the hues shift, which can sometimes be disturbing.

You can avoid this by selecting ‘Luminance’ as the filling method in the layer palette. In order to strengthen the selected individual colors, use the ‘Image I Adjustments I Selective color’ tool. In our example here, an increase in the saturation for yellow, green and blue hues makes a great difference. In order to make the picture crisp, sharpen it with ‘Filter I Sharpen I Unsharp mask’.

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