| What do you think of the following photograph (Le Fort Carré in Antibes)? It is an old photograph, and
rather faded - the contrast is too low and needs increasing. This is a
straightforward adjustment to make, but first you will need to copy the photo
onto your hard disk and then open it in Photoshop, as explained on the Basics
page. To adjust the contrast, choose Image > Adjust > Brightness
and Contrast. Make sure that the Preview option is turned on, then adjust
the contrast using the slider until the image is as good as possible (check what
happens if you use much too much contrast). Then save your work into your
personal folder. Do NOT be tempted to use this panel
to adjust the brightness for there is a much better, more sophisticated
way.
The contrast control offers a good and easy way of increasing
the contrast in a picture, but I advise you not to use it to treat pictures that
are suffering from too much contrast. This is because the use of the
contrast control in that situation would leave you with a picture that contains
no pure black or pure white, and most pictures should contain a little of each.
Correctly solving the problem of excessive contrast is a topic that I will
return to at the end of the Brightness lesson, which you can access by clicking
the Up button at the top of this page.
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