I want shadows in all the right places

asamuel

smacking my head against a brick wall. Bad choice of apature and shoddy flash understandinghas resulted in shots like the following. However, I like some of the content as 'tude, so I'm wanting to work on them.

On the fly just fiddled with the RAW shadows in the shot below. I like the richness of the colours, they remend me of dank and scrotty back bars in the U.k. and we were kind of going for that feel. but questions.

1) How best to approach the shadows and force them in ( I usually do the opposite and tone down shadows).

2) What colour is too evident in these shots, should I adjust that in color temp or someother way?

3) should I be thinking of exposing multiple versions of the file and combining in a HDR fashion? Anybody got a link for the best way to do this?

No matter how much I learn with PS CR2, I never seem to see a straight forward way to do things, I hope this comes wilth time.

I know basic principles for LAB, curves and Masking but not great.


This image was bullied in RAW shadows I like some of the effect of richness and shadows how best to approach it?




that one was shot a little dark with the flash , most have come out more like this: set here for RAW default.



Suggestions appreciated

asamuel

re-reading the LAB pages as a revision I wounder whether this is a focus points for adjusting and playing with these images

Two types of images require special care in LAB - those with different color balances in the highlights and the shadows, and those with color casts except in the highlights and shadows.

and if it is I will see by fiddling here

with images with very poor color balance in the mid-tones. These cannot be simply corrected with a simple curve in the A or B channel in LAB, ( unlike RGB or CMYK where curves can affect highlights different than shadows), but requires a selection of the highlights or shadows to limit the correction to the affected areas only. This usually means a selection based on the luminosity