Obviously, when I am taking pictures, I always try to achieve something close to perfect exposure.  Most of the time I do a pretty good job. Sometimes, I fall in love with a picture that needs a little work though. Thanks to Adobe Lightroom, it’s a quick and easy fix to brighten a dark picture.  There is so much you can do to your photos quickly, and easily with Lightroom.

If you’re curious about its capabilities, check out this post.  Today, I am going to show you how to fix an underexposed picture in lightroom.

If you take a picture that looks a bit dark to you, or could use a little brightening up, you likely have an underexposed photo.

***Wanna know what I am using to take pictures of my family?   You can see everything I keep in my camera bag here!***

How to fix an underexposed

picture in lightroom

for your convenience, there may be affiliate links throughout this post, so you can easily find the things i am showing you.  by using these links, your pricing stays the same, but i earn a small commission. you can see my full disclosure here

This is the picture I started with:

First of all, one way to know for sure that your image is actually underexposed is to look at the histogram in Lightroom.   In the develop module of Lightroom, you will see the histogram in the upper right hand corner.  When peaks fall on the left of the histogram, you know you have an underexposed image.

You can also tell it is underexposed by looking at the blacks triangle in the upper left corner.  If it is white, you know you have clipped blacks.  (Which basically means there is loss of detail in the dark areas of your image.)

Once you have determined your picture is underexposed (or maybe it’s just too dark for your taste), you can just work your way from top to bottom adjusting the sliders in the develop module.

I raise the exposure, bump up the contrast a little bit, and then pull down the highlights and whites to avoid ending up with clipped highlights.

That’s it!  Super easy, right?  Here is how the picture looks now.

And the before and after:

By the way, how cute does this kid look with that top tooth missing?  It’s the only reason he agreed to take these pictures for me!

 

 

 

 

come hang out with me!!
twitter
facebook
instagram
pinterest
and don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already to get YOUR FREE 14 page ebook– 10 photo projects for ANYONE with ANY camera!!!

you may also enjoy