Advice on fixing an underexposed digital?

[JustSomeGuyTN]

Last October I foolishly turned off the flash on my Sony p150 thinking there was enough light and not wanting to annoy the other guests. Well when the princesses came by I got some great poses but the images are dark. Especially frustrating is the picture of Alice who posed with me. I've tried a few things to get the brightness up but I always seem to loose detail and get a fuzzy image. Is there any way to turn up the brightness and keep the detail? I have Photoshop Elements 5.0 and Macromedia Fireworks though I'm not sure the version. I've heard of a layering trick where you make one layer monochrome and punch up the sharpness to get your detail then you make another layer bright to get your colors. Does that work well?

 

[jann1033]

never mind i read overexposed so no help from me.

 

[Master Mason]

If you could post an example, I am sure one of the photoshop wizzes here could help or offer advice

 

[ukcatfan]

While you are never going to get it perfect, try adjusting for the brightness, then running it through a noise reduction program(like Noiseware Community Edition), and finally sharpening it. From the first step until you are complete I would suggest switching to a lossless format like TIFF and then exporting back to JPG at the end. Because you will be doing three saves, JPG all the way through might introduce more problems.

Kevin

 

[Groucho]

Well, you're not actually losing data when brightening it up, but you are emphasizing the problems that it had to begin with - the vast majority of point-n-shoot digital cameras have serious issues with night-time shooting. Brightening up the photo later is only going to make those issues more obvious. Like Kevin said, running it through a noise-reduction program will help, though it will lose detail with that process, but it will be more clear.

The only other thing I can think of is, when you say losing detail, is it that parts of the photo are too bright when you turn up the brightness? If so, you need some way to bring up the fill light rather than the whole brightness.