Digital photography is everywhere these days, but digital cameras are by no means foolproof. When you transfer images to your computer sometimes you don抰 like what you see. Let抯 take a look at the 憇hadow/highlight?tool today, which is very useful for images that have been over, or underexposed.

We have a picture of our beautiful black dog, but unfortunately, the picture is quite underexposed around the dog抯 coat. If you have Adobe Photoshop CS, you can use their new 憇hadow/highlight?tool to correct shadows and highlights and gain back some of your lost details.

In the example below, you will be pleased to hear, I managed to get detail back into Lily抯 coat in seconds, with very little fuss. From the menu bar select Image->Adjustments->Shadow/Highlight. Then from the Shadow/Highlight dialogue box I simply cranked the shadow slider up to around 75 percent.

There is, of course, more to the tool than that. If you will notice, the area on the slab of concrete to the left of the dog is quite highlighted. To bring more detail back to the highlight areas (concrete) of the picture, I moved the 慼ighlights?slider to about 50%. Now I have details added back to my underexposed and overexposed areas.

If you're dealing with a tricky image, click the 'Show More Options' checkbox and play with the settings found there. The 'Tonal Width' slider allows you to tighten or extend the range of tones that will be affected by your adjustment. 'Radius', affects the area around each pixel, and the 'Clip Value' sets the range of light and dark values that will become the new black and white values defined by your adjustments. Have fun and play around with it!