The Photoshop® Elements 10 Book for Digital Photographers

Fixing Areas That Are Too Bright

Although most of the lighting problems you’ll encounter are in the shadow areas of your photos, you’ll be surprised how many times there’s an area that is too bright (perhaps an area that’s lit with harsh, direct sunlight, or you exposed for the foreground but the background is now overexposed). Luckily, this is now an easy fix, too!

Step One:

Open the photo that has highlights that you want to tone down a bit. Note: If it’s an individual area (like the sun shining directly on your subject’s hair), you’ll want to press the L key to switch to the Lasso tool and put a loose selection around that area. Then go under the Select menu and choose Feather. For low-res, 72-ppi images, enter 2 pixels and click OK. For highres, ...