This Lightroom Feature Can Quickly Fix All Your Exposure Mistakes

Lightroom Tutorials  •  Photography Tips

Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) is a feature that comes handy when you’re shooting in a difficult lighting situation—especially when you can’t seem to make an educated guess as to the right exposure. AEB automatically gives you at least three frames that are spread across several combinations of exposure settings. That way you have several exposures to choose from. Not surprisingly, this feature is widely used in landscapes and HDR photography. The problem is that sometimes photographers forget to turn the feature off after using it. This can result in some pretty embarrassing situations. Photographer Matt Kloskowski has a solution:

If you’re in the middle of a studio portrait session (or shooting anything other than landscapes) and realize that your camera is taking each image at different exposure compensation settings, you probably have AEB turned on. Once you’re over the initial embarrassment, the horror of what happens to the exposures you just took sets in. Don’t lose heart if this happens to you; there’s an easy way out.

Match Total Exposures

The solution is in using Match Total Exposures, which is an often overlooked feature that has always been around in Lightroom. To use this feature, first select an image from a series that you goofed up with the exposure. Select the one that seems to be in the ball park (there’s bound to be at least one that’s close to a proper exposure). Make any desired adjustments to it in the Develop module.

Use Match Total Exposure to salvage bracketed shots.

Then select the rest of the images from the series. Hold Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) and make your selection. These should be the images that were bracketed. Click on Settings and select Match Total Exposures.

Bang! All the images in the series will now have the same exposure. They will be matched with the image you adjusted to your liking.

Simple, isn’t it?