If you regularly edit images on a dark background, in Lightroom or another program, you may be leaving your images too dark (or too bright). See the image below, on a black background, where the image seems to be bright enough. Because you’re referencing against a black background, the snow seems relatively bright.
When shown on a white background (right click in Lightroom or Photoshop to change the color), you now realize the snow is actually more gray and doesn’t have a pure white where it should.
If you want a true white in your image, you need to compare the image against a pure white background. This is especially important if your image is going to be printed or posted online, where the background is typically white.
The exposure is corrected below, rendering a more natural image. You can adjust your image brighter through the exposure, highlights, or whites slider depending on if you want everything brighter or just the brightest areas (leaving the mid-tones the same).
You can also refer to the histogram to make sure your image is actually ranging all the way from black to white. Regardless of your background color or screen brightness, the histogram will always show you how your image ranges from pure black to pure white. In this example you can see there are no values touching either side of the histogram, meaning there is no highlight or shadow clipping.
Below is a second image where I wanted to include values close to white and close to black. In this case it’s necessary to check against both a white and black background.
The histogram confirms that the image ranges across the full range of tones without clipping highlights or shadows.
A third example again shows how snow may appear to be bright enough on a black background, but appears darker once shown against true white.
Corrected, this image shows snow as truly white (not gray). There were no true blacks in this bright scene, so they won’t show up in the final image either.
If you’re interested in learning more on Lightroom and post-processing, consider joining one of my workshops!
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