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On our recent trip to the Skyline Drive, I took 174 digital photos. I happen to like to frame my photos with a tree or other natural object. When I got home and downloaded them to my computer, I was surprised at how dark the shadows were. Look at the photo below and you’ll see what I mean.
I came across a tool called Light Machine. The examples on their web site sold me. I downloaded the trial version and was impressed. After test-driving it, I plunked down my PayPal money and downloaded the real version. Look at the results below.
The tool runs as a Plugin in my ancient PaintShop Pro. I just tell it how much I want to lighten the shadows, it then looks at my photo, figures out where the shadows are and gives me a photo that looks almost like I used a fill-in flash.
It’s like magic.
It can also be used to darken overexposed portions of your photo. Look at my Memorial Day tribute photo. Click on the thumbnail to view the orginal photo I started with.
I used Light Machine to lighten the shadow from the tree. But the part in full sun was over exposed. So I used Light Machine to darken the "hot" spot. I'm not very skilled with this tool yet, but click on the thumnail to see the final result.
The only drawback I see so far is, it seems to add some noise to the photo and it also leaves a "halo" around some of the shadow areas. But, as I say, I'm still learning how to use it and those results may be due to my ineptitude.
Posted by Ted at June 6, 2005 10:44 AM