Brightness & Contrast

[albo]

Fairly new to editing photos... I'm trying to adjust the brightness and contrast to make this look "good" but I'm finding it very hard to strike a balance. It's either too faded (if I increase brightness without contrast) or too harsh and losing detail (if I increase the contrast). I'm using Paint Shop Pro...

And here is the original:

And any other comments about the photo are welcome too!

By the way, feel free to edit the photo for the purposes of a reply... Thanks!

 

[LaFoto]

Well, this photo is severely underexposed to begin with.
But underexposure is not as bad as overexposure, as usually there still is a lot more data there than can be seen (whereas in the case of overexposure the data is really gone). So with a more detailed pp software some more can be "lured" out of this image, which I sort of like because it so looks like it could have been taken in "my turf" here - there is more than one area round here that looks JUST like this!

I tried to adjust the levels (the photo has no highlights at all, and hardly even any midtones, according to the histogramme), to selectively (and very mildly, at an opacity of only 30) up the reds, yellows and blues, and later once more adjusted the curves very carefully to see what is in here. This is what I found:

 

[grafiks]

I also took a stab at it. Using Photoshop CS, I adjusted levels and then curved it. My result looked identical to LaPhoto's, so I didn't bother posting it. It is too severely underexposed to bring the detail out in the wood, unfortunately.

 

[albo]

Thanks guys.. Looks like I've a good bit to learn... That photo cost me a pair of jeans! (Ripped on barbed wire) and the light was fairly low anyway... And at the time I didn't know about adjusting the sensitivity of the "film" (ISO)

 

[grafiks]

Thanks guys.. Looks like I've a good bit to learn... That photo cost me a pair of jeans! (Ripped on barbed wire) and the light was fairly low anyway... And at the time I didn't know about adjusting the sensitivity of the "film" (ISO)

Haha The subject was very cool though.

I'm not sure what Paint Pro has for tools. I still don't think you would be able to salvage the severely underexposed areas. Just not sure how to relate what we did in Photoshop to what you would do in Paint Pro.