More pleasing overexposed areas (Lightroom tip)

One of the problems of digital photography is that the transition from normally exposed areas into overexposure is rather unpleasing: as soon as the bit buckets of the sensor flow over, it's like a brick wall. There is no "analogue" exposure latitude, headroom, etc. (sidenote: this is the same for digital audio: analogue tape had an area beyond 0db where it would gently saturate, giving a warm and fuzzy distortion, while digital audio has no headroom - over 0db, it simply clips and gives a harsh and unpleasant distortion). And yes, the Fuji S5pro is a very pleasing exception in the digital photography domain, because Fuji's unique SR sensor gives digital photography the "analogue headroom".

I've been looking for a way to make - unavoidable - overexposed areas more pleasing, and I think I found a good method using Lightroom's local corrections. Negative Clarity, to be more precise - an effect that I mentioned here before. And in fact it's the same idea: this time, adding "glow" to overexposed areas so that the transition from normally exposed areas will apear more pleasing. Lets have a look at the final photo first:


Final Image (D700 with 70-300mm lens, 70mm f/8 - 1/2000s @ ISO200)

It's not a masterpiece, all right, but it's nice for illustrating that what I am talking about. :-) The sun was rising above the cliff called Salzachbruch (also called "Hund" by locals) and its warm morning light was reflecting on the river. It's not the sun in the already very bright sky that was the problem of course - but its reflection on the rather dark river.

That area looked rather odd, with harsh white overexposed spots on the dark water, and with a good amount of color fringing around them, too. I used the local adjustment brush in Lightroom (with auto masking turned OFF!) and began to paint "Clarity -100" over that area:


Applying the local correction (negative clarity, highlighted in red)

This kinda makes the overexposed areas "overflow" into their neighborhood, which makes the whole area a little bit brighter, and thus the transition from dark water to overexposed spots is not that hard (the other local adjustment control points are for adding more clarity in the sky and trees and for some flare removal). The next problem is the color fringing around the highlight spots on the water, here's what that looks like:


Red color fringes around overexposes areas

This can be corrected easily by selecting "Defringe - All Edges" in the "Detail" panel of the Develop module in Lightroom. Depending on the photo, using this might cause a general reduction of saturation; if that happens you might want to increase the saturation to get back the original color and vibrancy. Here's the same area with corrected fringing (sorry it's not exactly the same crop - but you can clearly see the result):


With Lightroom Defringe correction

Last not least, a screenshot of the direct Before/After comparison in Lightroom. The differences may not be dramatic, and if one pass of negative clarity is not enough, it's always possible to simple "stack" the effect and add two or three layers of negative clarity for even more softness.


Left: After / Right: Before

Honk if you think that this is useful for you. :-)