Light Meter: Making a Bad Photo Better

Yeehaw! I bet you boys and girls have taken lots a pictures of yur family. Like the time Joe-Joe done gradyated from 5th grade after 3 years. Or, or, or when Uncle Clyde won the blue ribbon for having the best looking twin. Boy oh boy do I remember those days.

I betya that sometimes those pictures don’t look so good. That’s cuz the flash only goes about 8-10 feet and your standing 12 or more feets away. That means the light falls off and doesn’t iluminate your subject.

Hooey, we can fix them photos right for ya. I’ll show you how. See here, I took a photo of Billy while he was on the stage singing and dancing for the fine folks at Disneyland. He’s part of that band, Billy Hill and the Hillbillies. My friends and I were sitting right next to the stage, off to the side in the penalty box. With my little point and shoot camera that has a 3x optical zoom, I grabbed this shot of Billy in acshun!

The flash went off but Billy was too dang far away. Now my picture is a bit underexposed. The onslaught of the yellow and magenta colors are from the stage lights cuz they are faaaaancy in the Golden Horseshoe. I could play with them pinks and yellas to try and bring Billy’s skin tone back to normal but I can breathe a whole new life into the fella by changing him to black and white.

Most photo software programs will let ya make a color picture into black and white. I use Adobe ImageReady CS2. Under Image, I go to Adjustments and then Desaturate. This yanks out all of the color from the photo and gives me this.

It’s now black and white but it’s still dark and muddy lookin’. That Billy looks like he’s gonna put that there washboard to good use.

When I go back to Image, I’m gonna click on Adjustments and then Levels. A box shows up and it shows the range in tones. Shadows on the left, midtones in the center and highlights on the right. By moving those do-hickey sliders around I can brighten up the photo. See here, now!

Woooeeee, Billy is lookin’ brighter already. Too bad them levels didn’t make him smarter. Heh heh heh. I got one more thing to do to the boy, add some contrast. I go back to Image, back to Adjustments, and this time I’m a gonna pick Brightness/Contrast. Just sliding that arrow to the right under Contrast is gonna make those whites pop straight at ya!

Take a look at the boy now! Those whites are clean as a whistle without losing any detail and the blacks are dark as a pig who spent the whole day rolling around in mud and then lay down in the sun just like a happy little piggy. Sooie!