Maybe you remember those pre CS Photoshop versions where you had to manipulate masking to shed some light to shadowed areas on your photos?
Well maybe you dont, but because we do, we thought of sharing the following quick tip available in the CS versions.

Here we have a nature themed photo, where the shadows on the inside of the branch are not that easy on the eye.

Click Image> Adjustments > Shadow/Highlight which will bring up the following dialogue box.

You will notice that unless you have messed with the Shadows setting before, the default setting is on 50% which may make certain photos look bleached, especially if there is already too much light involved.
We slide the Shadow setting to 35-40% and the entire picture brightens up making the shadow less destructive.

You can play around with the highlights as well, but be careful as this may take the focus off the subject of the picture and to the background as the highlights setting tends to emphasize the entire colors spectrum rather grossly. If you feel there is the need for a quick highlighting try anything below 10-15% .

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