Alternative method to brighten the shadows

[Dan freeman]

 

 

[kirkt]

Nice!

You can also do this by placing any adjustment layer on top of the image and setting its blend mode to Screen (or whichever you choose to accomplish the task).  Then you can use the Blend Options (ranges) interface to target the tonal range you want to lighten.  This way you do not need to select the tonal range ahead of time (for example, the highlight selection you made) and you can always alter the targeted tonal range after you inspect the effect of the lightening.  Also, there is no need to copy and paste a duplicate pixel layer.

I usually use a curves layer as the lightening layer because you can alter the lightening by adjusting the curve too.  Same applies for darkening highlights, only set the blend mode to multiply.

Once you have lightened the shadows, you might find that you have lost contrast in those areas - you can add another adjustment layer and set its blend mode to overlay or soft light and blend some contrast back into the image.  You can always apply all of these adjustments locally by painting on the adjustment layer's mask, and with layer linking you can propagate the mask to all of the adjustment layers at the same time so the masked changes are consistent across layers.

The adjustment layers are just dummy layers to affect the blend mode change, you do not need to make any actual adjustments (for example, to the curves or levels or whichever adjustment layer you place in the stack).

Here is the AP tutorial about the Blend Ranges interface and how it works:

kirk