editing 101 - fixing exposure

It's your lucky week Lens Flare readers - 2 lessons in one week! I'm pretty excited about this series, because I believe for many of you understanding some basic editing skills will enhance your photographs tremendously. Let me be clear, though - editing is no substitute for mastering the basics and for composition. No amount of editing will transform an otherwise mediocre photo into an amazing one.

For this series I will be using Picnik - an online photo editing service, but the lessons are applicable to any photo editing program (photoshop, iphoto, etc.) Personally, I edit using iphoto and Aperture, but if any of you have editing programs that you like and would like to share with other readers, please leave a comment.

So here we have 2 photos of this amazing shrub in my front yard (anyone know what kind of shrub this is? It was indescript about a month ago and now - WOW). The first is underexposed and the second is overexposed. Never fear, some basic editing in Picnik and you can transform these photos to (almost) perfect exposure.

Underexposed

After uploading your photo, choose the "exposure" tab (in the edit section). To fix an underexposed image, move the lever to the right (positive numbers) until the photo looks properly exposed.

From this:

To This:


Overexposure:

Same as above, but move the lever towards the left (negative numbers)

From this:

To This:


See? Big difference - and this is only one of numerous edits you can do to enhance your photos!

I'll be back next week with more editing 101.