Hey guys,

This is my first image post. I am fairly new new to photography. My photoshop skills are also novice level. It looks over expose. I really would appreciate C&C for this. Thanks in advance.

Canon 40D
f/8
iso 100
1/60

Welcome. It is overexposed - if you open the image in Photoshop and open the Levels dialogue you can see that the graph is too far to the right. If you hold down the "Alt" key and click on the right hand arrow under the graph you can see that the red channel is the problem.

If yo shot Raw you could probably improve it in the conversion - if not - now's the time to move over to it as although it will add to your post processing learning curve it makes it easier to recover from errors.

Strong colors like reds and yellows often give this problem.

Hope this helps.

In this image it has made the tractor take on quite a painterly look!

paulhodson wrote:
Welcome. It is overexposed - if you open the image in Photoshop and open the Levels dialogue you can see that the graph is too far to the right. If you hold down the "Alt" key and click on the right hand arrow under the graph you can see that the red channel is the problem.

If yo shot Raw you could probably improve it in the conversion - if not - now's the time to move over to it as although it will add to your post processing learning curve it makes it easier to recover from errors.

Strong colors like reds and yellows often give this problem.

Hope this helps.

In this image it has made the tractor take on quite a painterly look!

Paul,

That does help, thank you very much, any tips on how to not under expose or correct it in PP... I haven't shot in RAW yet.. just JPGs

bm

Hi

Correcting in PP is difficult unless you shoot Raw. You can see the problem if you open Image/Adjustments/Exposure: even if you dial the gamma right down the image stays quite colored. Do this with a correct exposure and it will tun black!

Give Raw a try - your camera can probably shoot both at the same time so it would give you a chance to try it out without feeling you were losing control. Then, especially when you get a tricky exposure, you can try processing the Raw where you have so much more control - especially for scenes which are contrasty and you can process twice - once for the highlights and once for the shadows and combine them in Photoshop.

As far as avoiding it is concerned you need to check the histogram carefully - if you can set it to show red green and blue separately this can help to look for the overexposure in one channel and also look for flashing highlights on the picture. Remember that the camera is quite limited in its ability to cope with a wide dynamic range - so here you have quite a dark scene - engine and under the hedge and a very brightly colored area in the sun.

It is important though not to underexpose - in general it is better to "expose to the right" (see http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml) but you do need to try and avoid blowing out highlights which are important - there are often specular reflections which burn out whatever he exposure which you have to put up with.

Finally - if in doubt and it is stationary - bracket the exposures.

Hope this helps