How to correct the exposure using Canon’s free Digital Photo Professional software

Capturing the moment is key to great shots, especially when you’re photographing action and wildlife. However, getting the exposure right in such cases can be tricky. If you shoot Raw, you can correct exposure at the editing stage. Canon’s Digital Photo Professional software has powerful tools for tackling exposure problems, and here we’ll show you how to lighten our dark subject to bring out colour and detail.

From this…

To this in a few simple steps!

Here’s what you need to do…

1. Get started
Launch DPP and select Folder view (top menu bar), then go down to the Folder menu option on the left-hand side of the screen. Navigate to start image, and double-click on the image to open it. If you go wrong at any stage during the editing process, simply click on the back arrow next to each setting to reset that adjustment to the default.

2. Crop for dynamism
We’ll start by cropping the image to improve the composition. Click the Trimming Angle button on the top menu bar then, in the cropping window, open the Aspect Ratio drop-down menu and choose 3:2 so you can draw a landscape-orientation crop constrained to those proportions. Click-and-drag to draw out a crop similar to the one shown, then click OK to crop the shot.

3.Let there be light
Click the Tool Palette button in the menu bar, then click the RAW tab and move the Brightness Adjustment slider right to lighten the image. In the Picture Style section, move the Highlights slider below the histogram in to lighten the highlights, then pull the Shadows slider in to darken the shadows and boost contrast. Next, click the RGB tab and go to Tone Curve Adjustment. Click to place a point in centre.

4. Sharpen and save
To finish, zoom the image to 50% by clicking the 50% View button in the menu bar. To sharpen the image and enhance the fine detail in the feathers, move the Sharpen slider on the RGB tab up to around 30. Don’t go much beyond this setting though, or you’ll start to exacerbate image noise and create edge halos. To process the image go to File > Convert and Save and save the edited image in your preferred format.

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2012 at 2:03 pm and is filed under RAW. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.