Urban Lightscape

In most cases, a good amount of light makes all the difference between a good photo and an underexposed one. If your pictures are not exposed correctly, you can make the necessary corrections in any image editor, but things can get tricky if you need to adjust only a specific part of the photo, like the sky or a shadow. Urban Lightscape is dedicated specifically for this task. It gives you the possibility of increasing or decreasing the exposure in specific areas of your pictures, without making any selections or creating any masks.

Urban Lightscape is free to try for 21 days, without any functionality restrictions. It is available as a standalone application for Windows and Mac OS X and as a Photoshop plugin. Installing the application takes only a few seconds and you don't have to meet any special requirements.

Despite it simple appearance, Urban Lightscape's functionality is more advanced than that of other lightweight image editors. Once you load a picture, you can click and drag a few sliders, on the right side of the interface, to adjust its blacks, whites and the overall brightness. Adjusting the exposure in a particular area can be done by double clicking and dragging the cursor up or down, while holding down the mouse button.

Double clicking on the loaded image will place a local control point. If you are not satisfied with your adjustments, you can double click a control point again and drag the cursor until the lighting looks better. The software allows you to place any number of control points. Furthermore, you may click and drag a control point if you wish to cast a particular light in a different area.

Other sliders, located on the right side of the interface, can be used to spread the light from the control points, make it smoother and mix the red, green and blue channels. The best part is that Urban Lightscape incorporates a smart edge detection feature, which relieves you from making any kind of selections. The lights will behave differently, depending on where you cast them and you won't see any straight lines between a lighted area and a darker one.