How best to increase exposure

[kvbarkley]

We were at the Palm Springs Air Museum Memorial Day event (Worth a look if photographing WWII planes up close is your bag*) Anyway, since my Son is taking a Digital Photography class and has a Photojournalism assignment coming up, I let him use the T6S to take some pictures. Someone must have hit the QCD** and set the exposure to -3, so some of the images are underexposed.

These are JPEGS, so would it be better to use ACR and the expsoure adjustment or Photo Shop Elements Enhance and then Lighten or something else?

I will probably try both, but wanted to see if there were any suggestions for something I might have missed.

*https://palmspringsairmuseum.org/special-programs/

** People say it is such a great thing, but it has only caused me grief. I have just set the lock.)

[Waddizzle]

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@kvbarkley wrote:

We were at the Palm Springs Air Museum Memorial Day event (Worth a look if photographing WWII planes up close is your bag*) Anyway, since my Son is taking a Digital Photography class and has a Photojournalism assignment coming up, I let him use the T6S to take some pictures. Someone must have hit the QCD** and set the exposure to -3, so some of the images are underexposed.

These are JPEGS, so would it be better to use ACR and the expsoure adjustment or Photo Shop Elements Enhance and then Lighten or something else?

I will probably try both, but wanted to see if there were any suggestions for something I might have missed.

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Bumping up the exposure by 3 Ev in a JPEG gets ugly.  Instead of the image getting brighter, it just looks like someone is shining a flashlight on a print.  Try it, you'll see.  If it were RAW, the image will actually get brighter, but so will the noise. 

LR can do a pretty good job of removing that much noise, though.  Maybe PSE can remove noise, too.  I'd suggest that you reshoot, if you can.

[kvbarkley]

It was a one shot event.

Luckily there are no shadows. It was outside in 107 degrees. 8^)

[Waddizzle]

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@kvbarkley wrote:

It was a one shot event.

Luckily there are no shadows. It was outside in 107 degrees. 8^)

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PSE seems to do a much better job than DPP, I hate to say it.

[RobertTheFat]

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@Waddizzle wrote:

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@kvbarkley wrote:

It was a one shot event.

Luckily there are no shadows. It was outside in 107 degrees. 8^)

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PSE seems to do a much better job than DPP, I hate to say it.

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DPP has never been very effective on JPEGs, although Version 4 is better than its predecessors.

If you plan to edit a picture with DPP, you should shoot in RAW.

[kvbarkley]

I just used Photoshop Elements' auto enhance which did a pretty good job. PSE would not let me use ACR on JPEGS, grr.

Here are some examples and a detail of the sky noise which I could probably smooth if I wanted.

[cicopo]

I did this in a few seconds to a screen capture of the first photo using Picasa so all is not lost. A little improvement from each program may get it done. Just make copies of the originals & test out what each program is capable of. 

[KBeat]

If you were on a Mac, I was going to suggest trying the Auto Enhance tool in Photos which can do wonders with JPEGs. However, it looks like you're on a PC and getting good results with PSE.

FWIW, if you have an iOS device, there are some apps in that eco system that are amazing with JPEGs as that's an entirely JPEG world. You should have no problem salvaging those images. 

[jimmy1]

Can you do Layers? If so duplicate the layer and set the blending mode of the upper layer to screen. If it's still not light enough repeat the process until you're satisfied.

[jimmy1]

I endorse the recommendation to duplicate the layer and set the blending mode of the upper layer to screen. If it's still not light enough repeat the process until you're satisfied.

And have you tried Canon's own software, Digital Picture Pro?