learning curve

[JBW]

I have entered the shallow end of the pool. I intentionally under exposed this shot in the hope that the bright spots in the water drops would be eliminated. They weren't. Can this be done with settings or is it a photo shop thing?

[Inkanyezi]

No, you cannot eliminate the bright spots by exposure, i.e. settings, simply because they are there. However, reducing exposure often is not a bad thing, when you have a saturated colour, although it depends on how much of its tonality you have in the RAW file. Whenever there is a saturated red, it is worth the while to save the RAW file, and sometimes alternate exposures will help to get all tonality out of the almost monochrome red. Red often saturates, even in RAW, but always more so in a jpeg converted by the camera with its normal settings.

The red is rather noisy in the darker image, so exposure probably should be closer to the brighter one, but in the out of camera jpeg, some of the red has become rather "flat", due to saturation. There's probably more to fetch from the RAW file, although slightly less exposure might be required to get all the tones out of the red.

And the bright spots of water drops? Just try to get them as sharp as possible, so one sees the water, and it is no problem.