| Adjusting Lighting on Dark Photographs
1. Open up your image in Photoshop.
GAMMA
2. First we will try adjusting the gamma of the image. Duplicate the
background image by right clicking the background layer and selecting the
duplicate.
3. Click Image=> Adjust => Levels.
The middle number up top is the Gamma number. It is the middle arrow on
the histogram below. Use the slider under the histogram to the left to
brighten up the image. If this makes your image what you want, you are all
set. In this case, you are looking too many lights by adjusting the gamma.
CURVES
 4.
.Turn the background copy off and Duplicate the background.
5. Click Image=> Adjust => Curves.
This graph represnets the distribution of shades in the image. All the
darks translate into dark sades and lights t lighter shades and are
distribted along the normal curve. When am image is too dark, most of
the colors will fall in the lower part ofthe graph. Hence, we will need to
take these darker shades and translate them into slightly lighter shades.
 To
do this, you can click on the graph "curve" line to insert a new point. then
drag it to where you want.
Click on the center mark of this graph, hold your mouse down and drag it
up to translate the darker colors into lighter variations of that color.
Notice how this will cause a change in the lighter colors on the graph.
To compensate for this, and to apply a better balance, click on the curve
about 1/4 the and drag this part up to lighten the darks more. You will see
the lighter colors darken a little bit as the opposite side of the graph
will react inversely over the center pivot point. We do not want to let the
lighter shade darken too much since this picture was not too light.
 .
 6.
The still look a little washed out, so we will adjust the hue/saturation.
Click Image=> Adjust=> Hue/saturation.
Move the slider on the saturation up till you get the depth of color you
want. In this picture I used +20.
You can adjust the hues by moving this slider to correct colors. In
this picture I used hue = -5
Before and after
 
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