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Correcting Lighting with Fill Light in Adobe Camera Raw 4

Katrin Eismann


This video shows you how to use Camera Raw to correct common lighting problems in photographs. You learn how to correct dark subjects due to backlighting, incorrect white balance, and midtones that are too dark.

Requirements

To follow along with this article, you will need the following software and files:

Watch this tutorial in the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Video Workshop.

Correcting lighting with Fill Light in Adobe Camera Raw 4

  1. In Adobe Bridge, navigate to the file 060708_216.CR2. Double-click the file to open it in Adobe Camera Raw 4.0.

    This scene is backlit, so the faces of the women are too dark (see Figure 1). This is a fairly common problem with photographs, but it's easy to fix in Camera Raw.

    The faces of the women in this picture are hidden in shadow.

    Figure 1: The faces of the women in this picture are hidden in shadow.

  2. Press the F key to work with Camera Raw in full screen mode.

    First, you'll correct the white balance.

  3. Choose the White Balance tool and select a white or neutral-colored highlight in the image.
  4. Choose the Basic panel and drag the Temperature slider to the left to keep the blue color of the water strong.
  5. Now, to fix the shadows, you might be tempted to adjust the Exposure settings. But notice, as you drag the slider to the left or right, this adjusts the brightness of the entire image - not just the faces.

  6. To adjust the mid-tones of the image, use the new Fill Light slider instead. Click and drag the slider to the right (to about 33 points) to open up the midtones without blowing out the highlights in the image (see Figure 2).

    Increasing the Fill Light amount brightens the mid-tones of the image, including the women's faces, without blowing out the highlights.

    Figure 2: Increasing the Fill Light amount brightens the mid-tones of the image, including the women's faces, without blowing out the highlights.

  7. When you increase the Fill Light, it helps to also increase the Blacks a little. Just five points or so, to give the shadows a bit of depth.
  8. Finally, choose the Crop tool. Notice the horizon of the lake is on a diagonal in the background. You can use the Crop tool to straighten this out.

  9. Click and drag a rectangular area around the two women. Move your cursor over one of the corner handles until a double-sided curved arrow appears. This lets you rotate the crop area. Click and drag the corner to align the top side of the box with the horizon (see Figure 3).

    Crop the image and rotate the crop to straighten out the image.

    Figure 3: Crop the image and rotate the crop to straighten out the image.

    Now the image will be straight when you bring it into Photoshop CS3 for further refining.

Where to go from here

For more information and additional tutorials, visit the Adobe Design Center.