Shadow Realism
Over the last six pages we viewed a number of powerful post-production tools for recovering lost detail and enhancing limited detail at either end of the tonal scale.
Because of the nature of low light photography and its typical situations, shadows play a very large part in the image. The efficiency of image-editing software in pulling detail out of shadows makes it tempting to use aggressively, but this carries some dangers. One obvious problem is the enhancement of noise. Even when noise is fairly evenly distributed across an image it is not particularly attractive. When it is concentrated very noticeably and patchily in the shadow areas, it is even worse.
But beyond this, there is the more subjective issue of what looks right ...
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