Enhance your light paintings

A FEW SIMPLE TWEAKS IN CAMERA RAW OR LIGHTROOM CAN MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE…

It’s hard to get the exposure spot-on when light painting, and you might find areas look too dark or blown out. It’s best to shoot in Raw, as Raw files have greater dynamic range than JPEGS, which means you have greater headroom for recovering highlights or shadows. To do so, it’s worth getting to grips with the Adjustment Brush in Camera Raw/lightroom. We simply paint over an area with the tool then tweak the tonal sliders to change it. Here it allows us to lift the darker areas and balance them with the rest of the image. You might find that the colours look slightly muted in Raw files to begin with, so boost saturation and vibrance to make them stronger. ■