Photo Correction and Enhancement for Beginners : Part One

Bring out the Photo's Details

My niece put up some family photos on the Kodak EasyShare Gallery.

When she sent out a notice to all the family that the pictures were available for viewing on-line, she apologized for the darkness of some of the shots and wrote "Sorry some of the pics are dark, I'm just not computer literate enough to photoshop ... I'll learn one of these days :)".

Theresa, this is for you.

I don't know which I enjoy more, the photo or Theresa's caption. She has (my sister's) her mother's gift for turning a perfect phrase.

One of the neatest things about digital photography is that what you see isn't all you get! Even though a lot of detail seems to be lost in the shadows of the original photo (left), it can be revealed.

Just lightening up the photo brings out more of little Maire's face and also that there is a third person in the picture who was barely visible before.

To bring out details in a too-dark photo using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, first open the image file.

Click on Image, then Adjustments, then Levels. A histogram graph will appear.

This is a representation of all the digital information, or pixels, captured in the shot. In a too-dark photo like this, you will notice that the bulk of the data is on the left or dark side of the graph.

Under the histogram are three triangular sliders. Move your mouse until the arrow is positioned on the right triangle. Click on it, hold down and move the arrow toward the left.

Watch the picture as it lightens and brings out the hidden detail. I never tire of this; it is pretty amazing!

When you're satisfied that you have brought out all the detail you desire without lightening the photo too much (Like most things in life, there are tradeoffs.), release the clicker. Usually this will place the right triangle just at the "foot" of the histogram "mountain".

Did you notice that, while you were moving the right slider, the center slider was adjusting as well? This is an automatic adjustment which the program does to maintain color balance. It's not usually necessary to change this, but you may want to jiggle the center slider a little bit.

Give it a try and see what happens. The center slider affects the intensity of the midtones and sometimes gives a marginal overall improvement.

Save the image to a new name. It is best to preserve your original in case you ever want to create a different version.

Many of the image adjustments you make in photo manipulation destroy original data which you may want to use in the future. For example, when you lightened the image by moving the right slider toward the center, you threw away any pixels to the right of the triangle.

Also some image file formats, like JPEG, compress the file (again throwing away pixels) to save disk space or so that you can e-mail your images. If you keep editing the same JPEG file, eventually it will be unusable.

The Beginning

I'd like to make this the first of a series of articles on photo retouching and enhancement. If you have any requests, click the "Contact" button on the bottom of the page.

For more on photo enhancement, visit:

Part Two: The Evil Red Eye
Part Three: Composition & Enhancement