question about editing

[halfuncle]

If you edit a photo that's a little over exposed would it make the quality better?

I am asking this because when I edit an under exposed photo usually the quality gets worse.
So is it better to b
a) shoot normally edit normally
b) shoot at higher brightness and bring it down in post process
-because bringing up the brightness in post process sometimes brings the quality down.

 

[zombiesniper]

It's best to get it as close as you can in camera.
You can edit highlights and shadows equally well in post. The amount that can be brought back depends on how bad the exposure was.

 

[weepete]

More data is allocated at the highlights end, so it's better to overexpose and bring exposure down in post than raise it. Of course with this there is a massive caveat that you don't blow the highlights.

 

[ronlane]

I don't think you can do this as a general rule for all images. Is it better to over expose an image on a bright sunny day? I don't think so. What about the inside of a dark barn? Then I would say yes, over expose it.

But I will agree 100% with @weepete, that you don't blow out the highlights.

The probable reason that your images are getting worse is that you are probably way under (1 stop or more) exposed to begin with and when you bring up the exposure, you are introducing noise into the image.

 

[Ysarex]

Weepete is correct. Here's an illustration of what's going on:

Think of your digital sensor as a data collector. Your image is data. The more data you have the better without qualification. Your sensor collects data as if it were an inverted pyramid. The tip of the pyramid is the dark shadows of your photo and the low exposure threshold of the sensor. As you approach the tip of the pyramid the data gets so poor it becomes useless -- you got bupkis. The data at the base of the pyramid (bright highlights) is the best, cleanest, richest, all-things-good data.

BUT Just where the data is the very very best you're close to the clipping threshold of the sensor. When you reach the clipping threshold of the sensor you stop recording data completely. If more data is better then no data must be really bad.

Caveat: This is how the sensor in the camera works and applies to anyone working with camera raw files. Camera JPEGs add additional complications.

Joe

 

[greybeard]

What you would be doing is exposing for the shadows and pp for the highlights. This is fine as long as you don't blow out the highlights and only shoot at the base ISO. Breakout the tripod and fast lenses. Remember, long exposures add noise too.

 

[KmH]

Using a digital camera expose for the highlights in a scene.
Also known as Expose To The Right or ETTR, meaning to the right of the histogram.
https://luminous-landscape.com/optimizing-exposure/
ETTR
Exposing to the right - Wikipedia

Photo Editing Tutorials

Best yet if you want to do any post procesing is to shoot Raw files, because JPEG is a ready-to-print, lossy, compressed file type not designed to be edited post process.
http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/linear_gamma.pdf

If you're using a film camera expose for the shadows in a scene.

 

[greybeard]

Using a digital camera expose for the highlights in a scene.
Also known as Expose To The Right or ETTR, meaning to the right of the histogram.
https://luminous-landscape.com/optimizing-exposure/
ETTR
Exposing to the right - Wikipedia

Photo Editing Tutorials

Best yet if you want to do any post procesing is to shoot Raw files, because JPEG is a ready-to-print, lossy, compressed file type not designed to be edited post process.
http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/linear_gamma.pdf

If you're using a film camera expose for the shadows in a scene.

This is how we had to expose for shooting transparencies. There was no such thing as "post processing" with those things.