Photo Correction 101: Contrast

Contrast In Photographs

Contrast in photography is the difference between light and dark areas of an image. By increasing the contrast, you can bring out more detail in a photograph, and make an image appear much more vivid with color. When correction photographs, Contrast is often one of the first things done to try and improve an images overall composition.

Auto Contrast:

Let's begin with the basics. Auto Contrast is a great way to make a quick adjustment to an images contrast without doing any hard work. Using Adobe Photoshops Auto Contrast, we can improve an images contrast in one simple click. Begin in Adobe Photoshop with the image you want to add contrast
to:

To add contrast to this photograph, the first thing I will do is Auto Contrast. Go to Images > Adjustments > Auto Contrast in Adobe Photoshop:

As you can see below, there are some slight improvements in our images contrast, but nothing to heavy. For a quick auto adjustment, this feature is very helpful at times. However, for more dramatic effects, we will want to continue adjusting the contrast in our photograph.

The auto contrast has improved the quality of our photograph by a decent amount as seen on the right half of the image above. However, this is just one way to improve our photographs contrast. The next part of this tutorial will go over a more customizable way to do so.

Section 2 "Contrast Layers"