Shadows Up, Highlights Down when processing

I noted a statement that a professional made in one of his Lightroom 5 videos regarding shadows and highlights. He said that when developing photos, most professionals turn shadows all the way up and highlights all the way down. He is not a wildlife photographer. I tried this and it worked very well. It really brightens up the image. Was wondering how many people routinely do this for shots of birds.

The method works quite well, and Serge Ramelli (I assume that is who you are talking about) does this very well on his landscape photographs.

Personally, I think that using this method on avian subjects removes the micro shadows that make a bird's feathers pop. That fine, soft, quality that a feather possesses. Whenever I have tried this for birds, I end up with a very flat, dull looking bird.

By no means am I discrediting the method, as I used it extensively for my landscape photographs. I'm just saying that I have obtained better results for avian subject using selective contrast on the bird.

I do this all the time, photos simply look better with "larger dynamic range."

Use of these 2 sliders is a common part of my editing workflow in PS, but rarely do I take them to the extremes you've mentioned Larry. A lot depends on the reaction I see in the histogram, but also the end result I want in the image. It's an eyeball kind of adjustment for me and IMHO requires judgment on the part of the operator.

Because I expose for the brighter parts of what I'm photographing I don't have to do anything with the highlights. If I do it's after my raw conversion and it's done selectively. I do use some fill light during my raw conversion (depending on the image and light at the time) and again, if I have to do more it's done after the raw conversion selectively. I try to get it right in camera most of the time and shoot at optimal times so I don't have too many shadows and have to do too much to the image overall when processing it. For me my thinking is less is more but that's just me.

I also try to expose for highlights, and then I only adjust shadows and maybe midtones, sometimes, in PS.

I give each a small bump when needed. It seems to work well.

I usually try to photograph birds when they have the right kind of light on them, so that the images will look right naturally, without having to do such severe manipulations at the computer.

If the ambient light isn't perfect, then I will result to computer editing and make some minor adjustments. When I do so, I typically bring the highlights down about 5 to 10 percent. And sometimes I will bring the shadows up by as much as 5 percent. But all the way down (100%), and all the way up? No way! That results in a processed look, at least with my editing software. And I don't want to remove all the contrast from the image - that would result in a "flat" looking image without a rich, full sense of depth and texture.

The only issue with "shadows up" is you can introduce quite a bit of noise into the shadows. You certainly want to shoot raw and expose to the right with this method.

It's one i use fairly often for wildlife, sport and landscape shots where there's fairly harsh shade and lighting differences though.

You do need to be careful not to overprocess and the image will certainly want some contrast or blacks added.

Yes but not all the way up and down, because in certain photos they will introduce unwanted artifacts. Use shadow and higlight first, and then use the tone curve to do finer adjustments.

Interesting topic.

I also using Lightroom 5 as my primary editing software.

I have reviewed some online tutorials for landscapes where they drop the highlights and raise the shadows. This does decrease the contrast but then they increase the contrast by upping the whites and decreasing the blacks. I feel with a combination of these plus using contrast and curves you can get a better overall image.

Below I have linked to a few bird images I have processed. What do you think? Do they look un-naturally processed? I'll give the Lightroom setting in a later post.

Black-backed Woodpecker

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