Revealing detail in deep shadows...

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
April 3, 2020
3 replies
398 views

I have a photo that I want to bring out detail in the deep shadows. Using the Shadows/Highlights and running the Shadows slider way up high shows me there is detail there.

I can apply Curves and mask out all but the areas I want to affect and that's an improvement, but Curves doesn't bring out as much detail as I'd like.

I thought I'd try to see if there was a way to use Shadows/Highlights with a layer mask but I've read that it's not possible to use a smart object as layer mask.

Aside from going back in time and throwing some fill in the original scene, what is a method for bringing out the detail in deep shadows?

How to

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Chuck Uebele

Community Expert

There might not be much there, and if you push it too much, it will look very noisy, so watch how far you go. I would try what digitaldog suggested first. Then I might look into luminosity masks that you can use with curves. There are a lot of tutorials on luminosity masking on the web.