Absolute Beginner's Guide to Digital Photography

If the image is clipped (if data was never scanned because of a scanner error),

scan it again or reshoot the image. Remember that an image that intention-

ally has large areas of pure black or white should not be diagnosed as

clipped.

3. Adjust the contrast and brightness with Levels sliders. Adjust the white and/or
   black sliders to improve the contrast and brightness, using both your aes-
   thetic judgment of the image and a technical evaluation of the histogram
   (see Figure 10.18). You can read more about Levels in Chapter 15, “The
   Importance of Levels and Curves.”

CHAPTER 10 EDITING WITH SELECTION TOOLS 147

FIGURE 10.18
Slider bars at
bottom of
Histogram con-
trol amount of
contrast in
image.

4. Move the white slider to the left until the onscreen appear-
   ance of the light tones is correct. The dark tones need very
   little adjustment. You only need to move
   the black slider a tiny bit to the right.


5. Adjust the gray tones with the gray slider
   until the mid-tones of the image look cor-
   rect. In this image, the gray tones are a lit-
   tle dark, even after correcting with the
   white point. As a result, the image feels
   “heavy.” Moving the gray slider to the left
   gives the midtones a lighter appearance.

Be careful not to unin-

tentionally clip an image

when you increase its

contrast. When you

move a white slider to the

left, all the pixels to the slider’s right

will be clipped (made white). Unless

this effect is desirable, be careful to

avoid it. The farther you move the

slider to the left, the more the data

disappears. The black slider will also

clip all pixels to the left of it (all pix-

els will become black).

caution