Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom™ has the ability to reveal highlight detail that might otherwise have remained hidden. You can often recover seemingly lost highlight information by combining a negative Exposure adjustment with the use of the Recovery slider to restore seemingly lost highlight detail. It may be possible to use this technique on a JPEG image to darken the highlights a little, but this method really only works best with raw images. This is because Lightroom is able to use all of the luminosity information contained in a raw file that is simply waiting to be discovered.
To follow along with this article, you will need the following software:
Basic knowledge of working with digital photos
Based in London, Martin Evening was a founding member of the UK Digital Imaging Group, one of the first organizations dedicated to exploring digital photography in Britain. As a commercial photographer, Martin specializes in fashion and beauty shots as well as editorial subjects. He has written for magazines like MacUser, the British Journal of Photography, PEI, Amateur Photographer, and Image. A frequent speaker at industry events and presenter of Photoshop techniques, he is author of Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Photographers. He is also a founding partner of PixelGenius, developer of software for Photoshop.
Excerpted from The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers by Martin Evening. Copyright© 2007. Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and Adobe Press. To buy this book, visit www.peachpit.com.