How To Fix Shadows In Photos In Luminar Neo

With Steve Roe, discover practical ways to fix shadows in photos, recover dark details, and create better-balanced images with Luminar Neo.

As a night photographer, I can safely say I’m very familiar with shadows in my photos. And while they can be used stylistically, they can also break a photo and render it useless.

In those darker areas, we can fail to retain detail, or worse yet, introduce a great deal of noise that ruins the overall quality of the shot.

There are several ways around this, including preventative measures and fixes we can apply inside Luminar Neo that may help rescue your image, which is exactly what we are going to look at in today’s article. So let’s get started!

Why Shadows Aren’t a Bad Thing

Let’s start by saying that shadows are necessary in photography. They help add depth and interest to your image, allowing the viewer to become more immersed in the scene and better understand the space within your frame.

If we remove all shadows from a shot, the image becomes flat and uninteresting, which is definitely something we want to avoid.

Shadows also help shape the mood of a photo. I personally love bringing darker areas into my images to create a moodier atmosphere instead of having everything feel bright and loud. Those darker areas create a sense of quiet and mystery, influencing how the viewer feels when looking at the image.

I will intentionally “crush” my shadows as well. Sometimes there are details in the darker areas that I don’t want distracting from the image. It’s something photographers are often told not to do, but as an artistic choice, and when used intentionally, I think it can work perfectly well.

Deep shadows can simplify a scene, remove visual clutter, and help direct attention exactly where you want the viewer to look. I especially like doing this in moodier street photography and portrait work where atmosphere is more important than retaining every tiny detail in the frame.

Finally, shadows also help direct attention towards your subject. If the entire image is bright, it may not be immediately obvious what the main subject is. But when shadows are used intentionally, the eye is naturally guided towards the area you want the viewer to focus on.

So shadows only become a problem when they are too dark, making areas completely featureless, unless that is your intention, or when they introduce too much noise into the image. Let’s first take a look at some preventative measures.

Preventing Harsh Shadows in Camera

Preventing problems will always make your life easier and save you a headache when it comes to reviewing your work.

RAW Mode On

The first suggestion is to always shoot in RAW mode. This gives your image file a wider dynamic range, meaning more information is retained in both the darker and brighter areas of the image. While that may sound a little technical, all you really need to know is that RAW files give you far more flexibility during editing than JPEGs.

Light is King

Your scene needs to be illuminated well. Let me give an example from shooting narrow neon-lit alleys in Seoul at night. Some scenes look incredible to the eye in low-light conditions, but your camera may simply not be capable of handling them properly.

We can crank up the ISO to artificially brighten the scene, but at the risk of introducing too much noise. There have been plenty of times where I wished I could simply increase the brightness of the lights around me to help my camera out, but sometimes the scene just isn’t suitable.

Bounce Light

Using a reflective surface such as a bright wall or bounce board can help illuminate the shadowed side of your subject, especially in portrait situations.

You may not have extra lighting available, but you can instead reflect the existing light back onto your subject’s face, naturally lifting those darker areas and revealing more detail. Bounce boards are generally quite cheap, but you can easily make one yourself using white paper taped to cardboard.

Position Your Subject

Sometimes you may not have anything available to help, in which case moving your subject closer to the light source can make a huge difference. Even a small adjustment in position can dramatically improve detail and clarity in your subject’s features.

Shoot for the Highlights

This is a golden rule in photography and should be followed no matter what style you shoot. Remember the wider dynamic range available from RAW files? Well, we can recover far more information from darker areas than we can from blown-out highlights.

So if you overexpose your image because you’re worried about the shadows looking too dark, you may end up creating an even bigger problem. It’s perfectly fine for an image to be slightly underexposed, and in fact many photographers, including myself, intentionally shoot this way because preserving highlight detail is so important.

And because programmes such as Luminar Neo give us plenty of ways to work with shadows later on, protecting the highlights is usually the safer option. So let’s look at that next.

Fixing Shadows in Luminar Neo

This is always my approach because my images are intentionally slightly underexposed in order to preserve highlight detail. Here’s how I usually handle it.

1. Start with Develop

The Develop tool gives me everything I need to create a strong foundation for the image. My first step is always balancing the shot properly, because I can focus on shaping the mood later.

Depending on the image, I may lift the shadows slightly or even deepen them a little further. The important thing to remember is that, in editing, less is often more.

We can use the Shadows slider inside the Light menu or work with the Tone Curve for more precise adjustments.

Personally, I love using the Tone Curve these days because it gives me much more control over the relationship between shadows, midtones, and highlights.

2. Supercontrast

The majority of my shadow work is actually done using the Supercontrast tool, which can be found in the Advanced menu. This is where I not only improve balance and depth, but also begin shaping the overall mood of the image.

It gives you separate control over the contrast of the shadows, midtones, and highlights, allowing you to recover detail in specific areas without flattening the image globally.

That means you can preserve detail in darker areas without having to brighten them excessively, which helps maintain depth. You can also deepen shadows while still retaining detail, helping craft a much moodier image.

I especially love the control it gives over midtones, as bringing those areas forward slightly can really help an image stand out and feel more impactful.

Supercontrast is without a doubt a staple in my workflow inside Luminar Neo, and I highly recommend it.

3. Structure AI

I absolutely love this tool, and once again, it’s a staple in my workflow. For street photography especially, I use it by shifting the slider to the right, which adds clarity and detail in a way that still looks natural. That added clarity helps reveal more detail in shadowed areas while still allowing those darker parts of the image to maintain depth.

You can also shift the slider to the left to soften details for a more dreamy look, which is something I often do for portraits. If the background doesn’t benefit from this softer effect, I simply use a mask and apply softer structure to the subject while keeping more detail in the environment.

4. Noiseless AI

Noise is the worst, and as a night photographer, it is my sworn enemy. When I first started night photography 10 years ago, life was much harder than it is today thanks to tools like Luminar Neo’s Noiseless AI, which makes things much easier for low-light photographers.

Back in the day, denoising often left images looking “clay-like”, with strange textures and unnatural details that made photos unusable. Thankfully, technology has improved massively, and Noiseless AI now cleans images while retaining much more natural detail.

But remember, preventative measures are still the best approach. If your image looks like television static, there may simply be no saving it.

5. Portrait-Specific Fixes

Luminar Neo also has built-in portrait tools that can help, especially if the face is too dark. Inside the Face menu, you’ll find Face Light. This tool automatically detects your subject’s face and brightens it for you.

So instead of lifting the shadows globally across the image just to make the face more visible, this tool specifically targets your subject while still preserving depth in the rest of the scene.

You can also bring more attention to the eyes using the Eye Whitening tool found in the Eyes menu. Just be careful not to overdo it though, because too much brightening can quickly make the portrait look unnatural.

6. Light Depth Tool

Finally, I want to highlight one of Luminar Neo’s newer tools that works wonderfully in situations like this. The Light Depth tool is incredibly powerful and allows you to relight your image within a 3D space.

What this means is that you can move a light source through your image, and the tool understands the depth of the scene, allowing the light to behave naturally.

I now use this constantly to guide attention towards my subject. But there’s nothing stopping you from stacking multiple Light Depth adjustments in different parts of the image to shape how the light behaves across the scene.

For example, if a section of your background feels too dark, you can place Light Depth further back in the image and brighten that area slightly. Then you can apply another adjustment closer to your subject with more intensity so they stand out more clearly.

It’s a fantastic tool and definitely worth experimenting with.

The Bottom Line

Shadows are a necessary part of photography and are crucial for creating depth, because the last thing we want is a flat image that feels dull or uninspiring.

But there is a fine balancing act between using shadows for depth and making the image too dark. We risk losing detail in darker areas, and if those areas become too noisy, the quality of the image can quickly fall apart.

Remember that preventative measures are always the best approach, especially making sure there is enough light in your environment. But if things didn’t quite go to plan, Luminar Neo is packed with tools that can help rescue your image, including Supercontrast and Light Depth, which not only recover shadow detail but also help shape mood and atmosphere at the same time.