Are you lazy? Perhaps curves and levels are a scary thing to learn in Photoshop? Fret no more. There’s an easy way to adjust your dark photos. It’s so easy it only takes a couple minutes. There are the right ways to fix an underexposed image and then there’s this way. I can honestly say without shame that I’ve used this method before. I’m not ashamed. In fact, I’d be willing to bet no one will ever know which image or images I’ve used this technique on, but because it’s the lazy way, it’s nowhere near perfect. Therefore, as I said, it’s not the right way, just an easy way that should look like this in the end:
Step 1
Start with your source image that’s underexposed.
Step 2
Now copy the background layer by pressing Ctrl+J. Now change the blend mode in the layers palette for this new layer to Screen. As you can see, it lightens up the whole image.
Step 3
As you can see, it’s still too dark. A scene like this would lead anyone to drink. Let’s lighten it up a little more by clicking Ctrl+J repeatedly until it looks right.
Step 4
It does a pretty good job of lightening up the whole bar here. Certain scenes would be done at this point. Pretty easy huh? The one issue you can run in to with this technique is certain bright sections of your image can get blown-out easily. To fix this, combine all the layers except the background layer by selecting all the layers except the background one in the layers palette clicking Ctrl+E to combine them. Now with this new combined layer selected, click on the add layer mask button at the bottom of the palette and use the brush tool (B) to draw over the blown-out highlights. This will bring the original image back through.
That’s it, you lazy person you. Now get back to watching more reality TV.
From http://csscreme.com/tutorials/photoshop-tutorials/how_to_fix_dark_pictures_photoshop_tutorial
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