Commack High School Spring Concert 1
Great concert by the 11th and 12th graders!
One tool I find helpful when post-processing concert images is the gradient tool. You can find this tool in most photo editing software and it’s especially useful when dealing with uneven stage lighting.
You’ve probably noticed that the rear and right side of the stage are pretty much in the dark so this leaves the band percussion players and orchestra double bass players pretty much invisible. The solution is to drag a gradient over the dark areas and use the exposure slider to brighten the area covered by the gradient. You can’t go too far with this or you’ll introduce a lot of digital noise but you can definitely brighten them enough to be recognized.
This technique also works with the edges of the chorus, although the light on the chorus overall is much lower than the stage lighting. The one area this won’t work is the very front of the stage where most of the musicians are sitting in almost complete darkness. Even if you individually mask them and try to brighten them it just produces a noisy gray shadow because there’s really no detail to work with.
