Recovering details in shadows and highlights

Photo I took while snowshoeing at Big White, showing raw image (lower) and adjusted areas (upper).

There are a few things the avid photographer should work at excelling in regarding exposure.  Getting the right exposure is only part of the equation.  

Evenly lit scenes, especially under cloudy skies where there are no really bright areas and shadows are soft, rarely present a challenge as modern cameras can capture a properly exposed image with little fiddling, other than perhaps some exposure compensation to deal with an overabundance of dark or light values.  The real trick comes in choosing the right file type and extracting details in areas outside the histogram's range.

1)  File type:  JPEGs typically have about 8 bits of latitude (2^8) as their pixel shades are determined by values from 0-255 in three different channels (RGB).  This means that anything lighter or darker than what can be captured by 8-bit colour will wash out and be completely lost.

   HEIF images, something that cell phones can produce and some of the newer mirrorless cameras.  They use 10-bit encryption, meaning instead of the 256 shades of colour per channel there is now 1028 shades, meaning that the latitude is now about 10 stops (2^10).  Another feature of HEIF formats is that they are (or can be) lossless, meaning there are no artifacts produced and so cropping and enlarging produce better results.

  The best of course is the raw format, noting that not all raw files are equivalent.  Modern DSLR and mirrorless cameras typically have a dynamic range of 14 or so stops.  This means that details in dark and bright areas can be extracted using the right software.

2)  Software:  I use Photoshop to extract details in my raw images.  Other Adobe products include Lightroom and Elements.  If you want to use freeware, consider Darktable.  You can find Darktable at this website:  https://www.darktable.org/

3)  Bracketing and HDR:  If you need a greater dynamic range than what the situation you are in allows, you can bracket your image and merge them using a program like Photomatix.  You can find the program here:  https://www.hdrsoft.com/download/photomatix-pro.html

I bracketed the above scene and used 6 of my images to merge into a single shot using a trial version of Photomatix.  You can see the watermarks in the image from the process.  The result is below.

Photomatix processed HDR image from 6 bracketed raw files.

4)  Learn to interpret histograms:  I wrote a blog on histograms here.  I should do more work on histograms as they are easy to use once you get the hang of them.  I will put together something in the future.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com

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