Massive Highlight Recovery with the Photoshop/Lightroom Adjustment Brush
Posted on 27. Aug, 2009 by Paul Burwell in Everything, Photoshop, Videos
When I first upgraded to Lightroom 2.0, I spent a considerable amount of time playing with the new features. One of the new RAW processing features that really intrigued me was the adjustment brush. The adjustment brush allows the user to adjust Exposure, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Clarity and Sharpness of an area of an image that a user chooses by painting over that area with the adjustment brush. An additional feature is that the adjustment brush, in addition to any of the other adjustments, allows you to paint over an area of the image in a colour. For this tutorial, I’ll be using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.4 to make the adjustments although the same adjustment brush is now available in Adobe Photoshop CS4′s Adobe Camera RAW processing tool.
Before Adjustment Brush
I’ve seen the coloring feature of the adjustment brush used by photographers to colorize black and white images. It is a useful tool for colorizing old black & white images. But I had trouble imagining what sort of use I could put it to. However, when I discovered an image of mine of a Canada Lynx kitten, photographed under mottled light, where a significant portion of the critter was drastically overexposed where a beam of sunlight caught the side of the animal, it occurred to me that I might be able to make use of the adjustment brush to salvage the image. In a perfect world, you’d never have to photograph under mottled light conditions, but until I find that perfect world, I’m happy to use the software tools available to make lemonaide out of lemons.
After Adjustment Brush
My approach for recovering the area of the image with the blown highlights, as you’ll see in the following video, is to use the adjustment brush to make radical changes to the exposure of the overexposed areas. Additionally, I use the coloring feature to add some of the missing color back to the area. I finish up the image making a number of adjustments to the image, returning, at least in my occasionally humble opinion, a perfectly usable version of the image from a file that would otherwise have been delegated to the trash bin.
The video demonstrates how I accomplish this task and additionally walks you through a number of other adjustments that I’d make to this wildlife image to get it ready for prime time.
After you’ve reviewed the video, I’d appreciate hearing any comments you might have and I’d be happy to assist you with questions where I can.
The photograph featured above and in the video was created with a Canon 1Ds Mark II with a Canon 100-400 F4.5-5.6L IS lens at 1/160th of a second, F5.6 and ISO 400. For more information on the equipment I use and recommend, please check out my gear page.
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12 Responses to “Massive Highlight Recovery with the Photoshop/Lightroom Adjustment Brush”
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August 27, 2009
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August 28, 2009
[...] 1 votes vote Massive Highlight Recovery with the Photoshop/Lightroom Adjustment Brush When I first upgraded to Lightroom 2.0, I spent a considerable amount of time playing with the [...]
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August 28, 2009
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August 29, 2009
[...] Massive Highlight Recovery with the Photoshop/Lightroom Adjustment Brush | WildShots http://www.paulburwell.com/blog/2009/08/massive-highlight-recovery-with-the-photoshoplightroom-adjustment-brush – view page – cached When I first upgraded to Lightroom 2.0, I spent a considerable amount of time playing with the new features. One of the new RAW processing features that really intrigued me was the adjustment brush. The adjustment brush allows the user to adjust… — From the page [...]
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September 4, 2009
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Leave a Reply
Max Vernon
28. Aug, 2009
Wow. Thanks for this excellent, well explained tutorial on the adjustment brush. Fantastic job!
Grace Scalzo
28. Aug, 2009
Fabulous, Paul. Clear and precise. I learned a lot.
David Hunt
29. Aug, 2009
Thanks for that Paul! Great overview.
Rishi Kumar
12. Feb, 2010
wao i never knew you can use adjustment brush for adjusting so many things….
really useful and informative…
thanks for sharing
Guy
27. Nov, 2010
Thank you so much Paul, Great Job! I have watch many photoshop tutorials and most of them do not go into real life examples using wildlife or landscape. Your video was not only useful to see how to use the tools but to see how you thought about what needed to be done to correct this image. I often find myself wondering why my raw images never seem to have the impact or punch that professional photographers produce. It is refreshing to see image being worked in your digital darkroom.
Larry Jackson
26. Apr, 2011
I’ve been doing all my image adjustments in CS5, but have friends who like Lightroom. It is most useful to see a photo I can relate to being salvaged so effectively. I look forward to seeing more of your tutorials.
Bill Morgan
06. Jun, 2011
Paul, thank you so much for taking the time to share your expertise in Lightroom. I’ve been frustrated by the adjustment brush, but your tutorial has given me new hope for fixing blown spot highlights in LR instead of busting out PS. I can’t wait to give it a shot.
Again, thanx for such a clear and informative tutorial.