DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Newborns are endlessly cute. I have 1000 pictures to prove it.

Some of the close-ups suffer from uneven lighting. The built-in flash units on most consumer cameras have a limited range of use. In the case of my old Coolpix, arm’s-length “Speedlight” shots are rarely exposed well.

The image pictured here is underexposed in the area of interest. However, the baby’s sleeve is well-lit, and risks getting blown out if we correct the whole frame based on the lighting in the top half. Also, the image suffers from a red cast that is unfortunately typical of this camera.

Gradient masking provides a quick solution to the exposure problem: it allows me to apply a curve correction progressively across the image. In this case, a simple full-range gradient from top to bottom is adequate.

Note that no selections were made: this entire correction took about 60 seconds.

The exposure-correction curve is extreme. To allow for easy tweaking, I created it in an Adjustment Layer. To limit it to the top half of the image, I accessed the Curves layer’s “Layer Mask” by option-clicking on the layer mask thumbnail in the Layers palette. After selecting the Gradient tool and setting foreground and background colors to white and black (respectively), I dragged the mouse top-to-bottom to draw the gradient.

A second Adjustment Layer lets me pull the Red back in the highlights, to strip away the cast.

The resulting Layers palette shows both correction layers (although they’re disabled in this screenshot).

The resulting image can be seen in the right half of this before-and-after composite. Notice how the sleeve no longer competes with the face for your attention — yet there is no visible transition from the areas where a correction was applied to areas where no correction was necessary. Also, you’ll notice that the clothing is no longer pink.

For more Photoshop image-correction techniques, see the Photoshop channel.