Written By Steve Patterson

In this Photoshop tutorial, we'll learn how to bring out hidden detail in the shadows and highlights of an image using Photoshop's aptly named Shadow/Highlight adjustment. First introduced in Photoshop CS, the Shadow/Highlight command quickly became a favorite with photographers and photo retouchers for its amazing ability to bring out details in the shadow and highlight areas of an image that were simply too dark or too light to see. In fact, the Shadow/Highlight command proved to be so good at bringing out image detail, many Photoshop users began applying it to all of their images, even ones that at first glance didn't seem to need it.

The only real problem with the Shadow/Highlight command was that its default settings often made images look worse, not better, causing many people unsure of how the adjustment worked to quickly cancel out of it, never to return again. Also by default, the Shadow/Highlight command gives us only two basic controls, much like the Brightness/Contrast adjustment we looked at previously. The real power of the Shadow/Highlight command is found in its advanced options which we'll be covering in this tutorial. We'll also look at how to save more useful default settings to give you a better starting point when applying the Shadow/Highlight command to future images.

I'll be using Photoshop CS4 for this tutorial, but older versions as far back as Photoshop CS will work just fine.

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Here's a photo I snapped the other day of a duck enjoying a swim and a drink in a small pond. I didn't have the heart to tell him that his "small pond" was really just a large puddle since he seemed quite happy to have found it:

Unfortunately, the duck caught me by surprise and not wanting to miss the shot, I quickly aimed the camera and snapped the photo in a panic, forgetting to use a fill flash. The result was an image made up mainly of dark shadows and bright highlights with not much in between. Let's see if we can bring out more detail in the image, easing up a bit on the contrast and reducing its harsh appearance, using the Shadow/Highlight command. Before we begin, it's important to keep in mind that as powerful as Photoshop is, it can't restore detail that simply isn't there. If the shadow areas in your image are so dark they've become pure black, or if your highlight areas are so bright they've become pure white, there won't be any detail to restore. If there is detail though, the Shadow/Highlight command can work wonders.

While most of Photoshop's image adjustments are now available as adjustment layers, the Shadow/Highlight command isn't one of them. It's simply too complex to work as an adjustment layer, so it's only available as a standard image adjustment. Since standard image adjustments cause permanent changes to our images, we need to take steps to protect the original image from harm. You'll find the original image on the Background layer in the Layers palette. To protect it, we'll work on a copy of the Background layer, and the easiest way to create a copy of a layer is with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac). You could also go up to the Layer menu, choose New, and then choose Layer via Copy, but the keyboard shortcut is faster. When you're done, you'll see a copy of the Background layer, which Photoshop automatically names "Layer 1", sitting above the original. Notice that the new layer is highlighted in blue which is Photoshop's way of telling us that the layer is selected and ready to go:

To access the Shadow/Highlight command, go up to the Image menu at the top of the screen, choose Adjustments, and then choose Shadow/Highlight from the list:

This brings up the Shadow/Highlight dialog box. If you haven't yet made any changes to the default settings, you'll see a very simple dialog box with only two sliders, one for brightening shadows and the other for darkening highlights. The default Shadows amount is 50%, while Highlights is set to 0%:

A Shadows value of 50% is usually too much to start with and can result in images looking washed out or, in some cases, even give them a strange, otherworldly appearance, which is why some people quickly cancel out of the command and shrug it off as useless. That's unfortunate since Shadow/Highlight can be incredibly useful if we make a simple change to the default settings, which is what we're going to do. We're going to set both the Shadows and Highlights options to a starting value of 0% and save them as the defaults so that the next time we go to apply the Shadow/Highlight command on an image, it will have no effect at all until we make our own adjustments.

Since the Highlights option is already set to 0%, all we need to do is change the Shadows amount. To do that, simply click on the slider for the Shadows option and drag it all the way to the left:

To save the values as the defaults, select Show More Options in the bottom left corner of the dialog box:

The dialog box will expand to show several additional options that give us greater control over our results. We'll look at these options in a moment, but for now, all we're doing is saving our changes as the new default settings. For that, the only option we need is the one near the very bottom of the dialog box that says Save As Defaults. Click on the button to select it:

The next time we open the Shadow/Highlight command, the dialog box will appear in this expanded view (which is what we want) and both the Shadows and Highlights values will be set to a starting value of 0%. Now that we've taken care of the default settings, let's look at how to actually use the Shadow/Highlight command.

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