Brightness/Contrast

If your images look drab, it's often because they are either too light or too dark and they may also lack contrast. Sometimes the lack of contrast can even be hidden until you lighten or darken the image. When dealing with such a photo, the Brightness/Contrast command is one of the most basic adjustments you can make, so it's not surprising that it's one of the first commands most folks try. It's also one of the rare features in Photoshop that actually makes sense to the uninitiated.

Deke admits he used Brightness/Contrast for nearly all his adjustment work during the first six-or-so months that he used Photoshop. (Back in 1990, mind you.) That's both a testament to how intuitive the command is and to Deke's fortitude. Because it automatically clipped shadows and highlights, Brightness/Contrast used to do more harm than good. Happily, that's no longer the case. Ever since its reinvention in CS3, Brightness/Contrast can breathe life into your colors and dramatically improve an image with little effort.

This tip comes from Chapter 7, "Basic Color Correction," in Deke's Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Fundamentals video series for lynda.com. If you're a veteran dekester, you've heard much of this before, but scroll to the end of the post for some more advanced techniques. Read more » 

Recently, a few of you expressed mild to moderate surprise that I resorted to Brightness/Contrast to fix an image in the Lab mode. (See this and this.) So I figured I'd run an article that I wrote about a year ago for Photoshop User magazine. Okay, so it's a repurpose, but this version appears as I submitted it, headline and all. By which I mean, with a couple of hours of updating with the denizens of deke.com in mind. Anyway, here goes:

Ask a group of Photoshop experts to name the worst function in all of Photoshop and you’ll probably get a variety of answers: Defringe (doesn’t work), Dust & Scratches (removes neither), Pattern Maker (doesn’t work), Edit > Menus (removing commands doesn't simplify the program), or my personal antifavorite, the sharpen tool (takes a perfectly good image and makes it look like it was rendered in iron filings). But I think you’ll find a fair amount of consensus around what has traditionally been the most notorious image destroyer in all of Photoshop, Brightness/Contrast.

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To help you make sense of the most recent episode of dekePod, I've written up a discussion of how I modified the colors of my backyard in the Lab mode. Although it flies by in the video, the technique is not particularly difficult. I don't use Curves or masking or anything terribly complicated. Just Levels and -- brace yourself -- Brightness/Contrast. In Photoshop CS3, Brightness/Contrast has not only turned into a respectable command, but it has been elevated to pro status when combined with Lab. And it remains as easy as ever to use.

Some portions of this article have been excerpted from my upcoming article, "Don't Fear the Lab Mode," which will run in the September, 2008 issue of Photoshop User magazine. So as not to diminish the impact of that article (as well as the two that will follow it), I have purposely made the steps here brief, illustrated with thumbnail-resolution imagery. You should still be able to follow along, but you'll have lots more to look forward to in Photoshop User. Read more »