How to brighten only (dark) parts of a JPG photo?

[pstein]

Lets start with an example (see attached photo jpg file).

As you can see large parts of the photo are visible, clear and with natural colors.
But in the lower part the scenery is rather dark because its is in the shadow.

How can I automatically let PSP increase the brightness of ONLY this part of the photo?
"Automatically" means with only some steps.
I don't want to draw manually a lasso/freehand selection around this part and increase the brightness for this selection.

PSP should somehow recognized and select the dark part automatically.

Peter

[hartpaul]

Have you tried Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Highlight/Midtone/Shadow
You can do it twice and play with the shadows. You will not get full color in the shadoows as there is little information to start with.

[ehume]

On my toolbar I have placed an icon for Adjust Fill Light/Clarity. Amazing how often that is useful.

On the Menu bar, we have Adjust > Fill Flash... and Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Fill Light/Clarity.

Usually, though, brightening shadows is best handled in raw.

[JoeB]

How does this look?

EDIT: Brief info: I just used Rusty's New Dynamic Range script aggressively on a duplicate of the image about 3 times to open up the shadow area (which changed the colors, brightness and contrast of the areas of the image that were already sufficiently lit) and then changed the blend mode of that duplicate layer to Lighten, which then restored the colors, brightness and contrast to those already properly lit areas to the original ones. Then I merged the duplicate layer with the original. Took only a few minutes. If it had been my image I would have also then removed the telephone line or whatever it is in the upper right hand corner and then used the Clarity filter at between 30 and 50 to give the whole thing a bit more edge contrast, making it look sharper.

[bruce1951]

Try Adjust/Brightness and Contrast/Curves.
Make sure you do a reset.
Then lock the centre and top right, 1/4 of the line. Click on the line 3/4 the way down and slowly drag is up.

Then 'play' until you get something that suits your goal.

bruce

[JoeB]

Try Adjust/Brightness and Contrast/Curves.
Make sure you do a reset.
Then lock the centre and top right, 1/4 of the line. Click on the line 3/4 the way down and slowly drag is up.

Then 'play' until you get something that suits your goal.

bruce

I can't quite interpret exactly what you are saying with regard to the settings of the curve. Could you please provide a screenshot showing those positions you outlined, as well as showing how far you dragged the line at the end to achieve at least something reasonable to start with? And perhaps another that results in the lit parts of the buildings retaining their original colors, brightness, etc while illuminating the dark areas? I can't figure it out. TIA!

[bruce1951]

JoeB I was simply pointing out another option. Besides this poor old fella has difficulty with screen captures!!

Take any image. Open Curves. Put three points along the diagonal line. (I previously said 3/4 and 1/4 of the way. But that can be variable). The centre and upper right points will lock the line. Click on and hold the bottom left point and slowly drag it up. The shadows will open up.

Yes the image will/may look somewhat flat, or at least the shadows will. It should be possible to then open the image again in Curves and tune it as a whole.

Caveat - I use Photoline as my main editor and use LAB Curves so maybe I'm missing the mark a bit in PSP.

There are a number of ways to do the same task. A simple copy layer and erase brush could also be used.

bruce

[JoeB]

OK, got it. Tried is also, with playing around with the different points and dragging them around, etc. Yes, the shadow area that opens up is definitely flat no matter what you do, and without using selections to isolate it (or subsequently having to use the eraser, which can be as tedious around the edges as starting with an isolating selection) I can't come close in PSP to keeping the areas that are already lit at the same brightness and with the same colors as the original image. But thanks for the info.

As for screen captures - particularly if you want to be able to easily capture any specific area of the any screen on your computer and paste it into PSP, the most convenient, versatile and configurable program I have found for that purpose is the free Greenshot screen capture program. You can also create shortcut keys for the various types of captures (selected part of an image, whole screen - which will automatically capture the hidden parts of a scrollable screen in IE), of auto capture different panels of an application (like the Layers palette, Materials palette, etc in PSP). No ads, no extra unwanted stuff installed with it either. If interested in checking it out you can do so and get more info here:

https://getgreenshot.org/

[bruce1951]

Using Curves isn't the way I would do it but the OP wanted a 'simple' method.

If I was doing it I would create a second layer. Open the shadows in that layer, at the expense of the highlights. Then using the eraser erase all the unwanted highlights. (Assuming the 'shadows layer is on the top)' It maybe be tedious but sometimes it just takes time! Adjusting the eraser opacity will help.

LAB curves makes adjusting much easier. Hint Corel.

bruce

[JoeB]

Using Curves isn't the way I would do it but the OP wanted a 'simple' method.

If I was doing it I would create a second layer. Open the shadows in that layer, at the expense of the highlights. Then using the eraser erase all the unwanted highlights. (Assuming the 'shadows layer is on the top)' It maybe be tedious but sometimes it just takes time! Adjusting the eraser opacity will help.

LAB curves makes adjusting much easier. Hint Corel.

bruce

Understood. And as I asked you for more details, I have now added an edit to my post with the image I posted explaining basically how I did it.

[Corelius]

I couldn't resist giving it a quick shot.

I did a freehand selection along the shadow line and applied Curves and HSL (just saturation) to the bottom of the pic, then a 2nd freehand selection lower down (canopy tops) and applied Brightness/Contrast and Clarity to the bottom of the pic.

[JoeB]

I think the issue is that the original poster said that doing a freehand or lassoo selection is something he did not want to have to do.

[Corelius]

I think the issue is that the original poster said that doing a freehand or lassoo selection is something he did not want to have to do.

Gotcha. I read the OP too quickly.

But on the other hand, I would add that, having done two separate "lassos" as part of my quick & dirty tweaks, and although those two steps took longer than the other tweaks, they didn't take very long (zooming in and doing them in multiple chunks is key). And my (admittedly limited) experience with PSP tweaking suggests to me that it's often the case (and I suspect this is one of those cases) that you'll end up with a significantly better result with a freehand selection or two -- and you won't necessarily spend more time on the freehand selections than you would on the more complicated tweaking you'll need to do if you aren't willing to select by hand.

And I realize the OP may know that, but still have been curious about PSP's abilities to, in effect, select those kinds of areas automatically.

[JoeB]

I think the issue is that the original poster said that doing a freehand or lassoo selection is something he did not want to have to do.

Gotcha. I read the OP too quickly.

But on the other hand, I would add that, having done two separate "lassos" as part of my quick & dirty tweaks, and although those two steps took longer than the other tweaks, they didn't take very long (zooming in and doing them in multiple chunks is key). And my (admittedly limited) experience with PSP tweaking suggests to me that it's often the case (and I suspect this is one of those cases) that you'll end up with a significantly better result with a freehand selection or two -- and you won't necessarily spend more time on the freehand selections than you would on the more complicated tweaking you'll need to do if you aren't willing to select by hand.

And I realize the OP may know that, but still have been curious about PSP's abilities to, in effect, select those kinds of areas automatically.

Well, this is obviously a good image to do those experiments with, and experimenting with the tools as you did is always a great way to become even more proficient with PSP.

[pstein]

Thank you so far for the suggestions.

However all together your solutions try to modify the images completely.
I want to avoid this.

What I am searching for is a way to select only a contiguous area whose pixels are darker than a certain degree of "blackness".
This found selection should not contain small areas at the top of the sample pictures but start from a (clicked ?) point at the bottom of the image.

Once I have this selection I can apply brightness (and other modifications) independently from the remaining part.

How can I achieve this selection?

Thank you