Shadows And Brightness In Digital Photography Contrasting

When the lights come down to the final draw what will your picture look like? Some people are gifted and can take a picture straight from a camera and deliver a quality shot. It would be nice if we all could do this, but it is not a reality. Nor is a reality that those fortunate people can do this each time they use a camera. What are we to do?

I say we all go bowling and take the rest of the night off, however you are probably waiting to get the brightness adjusted while shadowing and contrasting your photos. Ok, then, I am like Erkle in some ways on the bowling part, except he probably can do better than me. Therefore, let's edit, since I do have a feel in this area.

Anyway, you snapped a photo that you hoped would come out looking like a winner. In the photo is your favorite pet, yet in the background the scene is dark. What are you to do? Crack open the image-manipulator program because you are going to need a few tools. Now that we have an underexposure shot situation, we want to turn this picture inside out and make it an exposure copy.

Most editing software's or at least a lot of them will automatically adjust brightness and contrast by using filters. The downside is the computers can't read a picture as you can read it, and will adjust the photo to its own liking, which is often not to your liking. Therefore, you want to get out your thinking cap, since you are going to manual adjust your own brightness, contrast and shadow if you like.

Assuming you are using Photo Deluxe imaging manipulators, we are going to check out the commands brightness and contrast. Once you select the commands, you will notice a dialogue box appearing in the window. The box should have sliders. With your mouse, click on the brightness slide and move it left or right, depending on what you are seeking to achieve. If you want less brightness, move the slider to the right. Do the same, dragging the slider to the left if you want a darker image. If you notice in the dialogue box, there is a little white box with numbers showing. You can use this box to select your own level of contrast or brightness if you know what you are doing. Likewise, to achieve contrast effect, move the slider either left or right.

Tip
You should highlight the area you want to contrast or brighten, since if you command brightness and contrast to adjust the entire pictures and some areas are dark while others are light, you will get an off tone shading. That is, the light areas depends if dark or light will either get darker or lighter.

Note: YOU can use the saturation command to adjusts overexposure colors if they appear flushed down.

One downside about Deluxe Photo programs is that it doesn't give you the sophisticated commands that Photoshop offers. Still, you can do a lot with either program if you know your moves. It pays to learn the commands in all imaging-manipulating programs so that you have a feel of the table when the cards fall down.

You can use the Shadows Command to cast a shadow over the image. You are the only one looking at this image now, so it is up to you to adjust accordingly. You can play with each command, experimenting with the image as long as you saved an original copy and backed it up. This will give you the opportunity to learn your stuff.