Tip: Shadow Highlight in Photoshop

[MisterClips]

There's a feature in Photoshop that is often overlooked by self-taught designers and photographers. Many of you already know this. For those of you who don't... read on.

Shadow/Highlight in Photoshop
This feature lets you adjust the shadow, highlight and midtone portions of a photo. It gives you more control and flexibility than just using "Brightness/Contrast". When you first use it be sure to click on "Show More" to get all the options.

The "Shadow/Highlight" feature is found under the "Images" Tab off of "Adjustments" in Photoshop's top menu:
( Image>Adjustments>Shadow/Highlight ).

Example:

The photo on the left came my way from a client. They shot it themselves. I was concerned about the dark areas in the product. After a few minutes playing with Shadow/Highlight I was able to bring out the details hidden in the shadows (photo on the right). Notice the even tones now visible in the area where his shoe is on the handtruck's toe kick. If I had used "Brightness/Contrast" instead, this wouldn't be visible.

http://www.misterclips.com/images/shadowhighlight.jpg

Be aware that using this feature can intensify or change color saturation levels. A tool is provided in the Shadow/Highlight palette for adjusting the color if too much saturation occurs.

[Broacher]

This is a great tool-- a very important control to take note of here is the Radius control. You have to watch your halos (though that won't be a problem for some people around here).

The 'magic' behind this tool-- and why it is more effective than even a good curve adjustment, is that internally, Pshop takes this adjustment into the 'master' space of LAB and I suspect, at a higher bit level than 8. This significantly reduces the droputs in the histogram and gives much better results.

Another trick to include with this tool, which is especially useful when working on an image that has only portions of dark shadow that need rebalancing, is to work on a copy of the target layer and go for those shadow areas, and don't be too concerned about overdoing it. Now you can either fine tune with a mask-- OR, by double clicking the new lightened layer copy, you bring up the layer's blending sliders and in the 'Blend if' bottom section, you slide the 'Underlying Layer' controls around to focus on the tone range you want to include or exclude. Don't forget to Alt-drag these arrows in two for feathering the selected range.

[patkennedy78]

Thanks Guys! I didn't even really know this existed, but I'm eager to try it out.

[urstwile]

I've played with this feature a few times, and I must say, it truly rocks. Broacher, that's a great tip about the underlying layer controls. I'm going to have to fiddle with that, I hadn't even thought of going there.

Thanks MisterClips. Great thread topic. :)