• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Upping low exposure

  Posted by Paul Baron on August 11, 2009 at 7:52 pm

  Hi, I posted yesterday under the wrong heading and can’t delete it so, I’m re-posting today hoping for some answers.

  I recently shot a wedding wherein the cameraman I hired to run my B-camera shot with auto-exposure, therefore anyone shot in front of a window turned into a silhouette. Very, very, very aggravating. I need to know if there is a good way to make this image:
  
  look more like this image from my camera:
  

  Please help!!

  thank you,

  Paul

  Nick Meyers replied 17 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Nick Meyers

  August 12, 2009 at 5:00 am

  “a good way to make this image… look more like this image”

  short answer: no. 🙁

  you may be able to get SOMETHING out of the underexposed stuff,
  but it wont look great, and it really wont look like the A-Camera.

  i’ve been lifting some outrageously underexposed stuff recently.

  i use a few tools for this:
  the free Lyric “Shadow Highlight” plugin is good.
  i use the Free To Much To Soon “Diffusion” plug in.
  i don’t actually add any diffusion, 9I have that set to zero)
  but i like the plug in as it gives you a simple way to feed the clip back into itself via a composite mode.
  using Add mode really lifts the exposure.
  there is also a control to affect the Shadows, Highlights, or everything.

  sometimes you have to use both of these, and sometimes more than one instance.
  this does freaky things to the colour,
  adding a 3way CC after each instance helps to control.

  it also adds a lot of noise,
  so my final tool is the Neat Video noise reducing plug-in.

  i had a quick go at something here: (this is PRE-noise reduction)
  

  in this image, i also used the free Marcus Herick “Facelight” plug in, to punch some extra light into just the face area.
  and used the ‘limit colour” effect in a 1way Color Corrector to tone down the outside, which had gone neon green

  you can see blotchy colours in the face, too, unfortunately.

  here it is with some NR:
  

  as you can see, it’s hard to get something good out of those shadows.

  if you want i can email you a project file so you can see what i did, and tweak it.
  i’ll send you the version without NR, as thats not a free filter.

  cheers,
  nick

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