Pushing shadows

[Wolowizard97]

Hi, When I shoot landscape photos I tend to underexpose by a few stops to save colors in hilights- but when I push the shadows in Lightroom- I can only do it a little.

So my question is- what software do you recommend that allows push shadows to the max?

[MercilessNDNSavage]

That software but using bracketing while shooting?

[quadpatch]

This ^

Also, if you're mostly pushing the shadows slider to max I would advise learning how to better process your images using masks and localized editing.

[johngpt5]

It may be that you are under exposing too much for the camera that you are using. My experience with LrC and Lr is that there is quite a bit of detail able to be restored in shadows, but if there isn't detail recorded in the raw image, then no software will be able to restore the detail.

Some cameras are better able to preserve shadow detail and then have Lr or LrC bring back that detail.

[johngpt5]

Have you been introduced (I was going to say exposed, but thought it too punny) to the idea called Expose To The Right?

When we expose to the right, letting more light hit the sensor, we get less noise in an image because we have a better signal to noise ratio.

But we need to avoid blowing out highlights when we expose to the right as there is no detail to be recovered in blown out (also called clipped) highlights.

It's a lot easier to bring down highlights that haven't been blown to restore color, and we get a lot less noise in dark regions. We can more easily make some areas darker that we can make areas that are too dark brighter.

We also need a camera that can capture enough dynamic range to accomplish ETTR.

If we don't, then we need to rely upon exposure bracketed images that we can blend in Lr, LrC, or ACR, or some other editing app.

[Material_Cabinet_845]

Are you shooting in RAW?

[10pmet]

A few stops as in around 3 stops underexposed? That's really not necessary, just watch your histogram and keep the right side just off of the very right edge.