Can You Make A Photo Look Like Its Backlit In Photoshop

By Scott Kelby
Excerpt from The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book for Digital Photographers

1 of the most common digital photography bug is photos where the subject is backlit, and then it is almost a black silhouette. I remember it's and so common considering the human eye adjusts for backlit situations so well that, to our naked eye, everything looks great, but the camera exposes much differently and that shot that looked very balanced when y'all took information technology, really looks similar what you see below. The Shadows slider (which replaced the Fill up Light slider in the Basic panel), does the best job of fixing this problem of annihilation I've always seen, but in that location is i little matter you need to add together.

Step One:
In this image, the sky looks properly exposed, but the edifice is totally in the shadows. While I was looking at the scene, everything looked fine because our optics instantly remainder the exposure of the scene, but unfortunately, our photographic camera doesn't—it exposed for just the heaven, leaving the building in shadows. Before we ready the backlit problem, increase the Exposure a little to see if that helps (I dragged it over to +0.45 without blowing out the highlights), then drag the Highlights slider to the left to -49 to lower the brightest highlights in the overly bright sky (hey, it helps).

Photo Credit: Scott Kelby

Pace Ii:
To open upwardly the foreground, click-and-drag the Shadows slider to the right (hither, I dragged to around +79). Dorsum in Lightroom three, you didn't want to drag the Make full Light slider (the Shadows slider's lesser-quality LR3 counterpart) that far, because it fabricated the epitome look funky. Luckily, you don't get that same heavy-handed wait in the current version of Lightroom. If y'all do creepo upward the Shadows slider pretty high (similar I did here), then the photo may beginning to look washed out (as seen hither), but in the adjacent step, nosotros'll ready that with just one uncomplicated motility.

TIP: Watch Out for Noise
If an paradigm has noise in it, it'south usually in the shadow areas, so if you do open the shadows a lot, any noise gets amplified. Keep an middle out for it as you elevate, and if you lot do meet a lot, go to the Particular console to reduce the luminance and color racket.

Step Three:
The mode to get rid of that done-out look is simply to button a little bit of blacks into the prototype by clicking-and-dragging the Blacks slider to the left just a little flake (here, I dragged information technology to -34). Luckily, this washed-out look doesn't happen virtually as frequently now as it did back in Lightroom 3, thanks to the new process version. In most cases, you'll be able to movement it just a little bit to bring dorsum the blacks.