One of the more surprising new features of Photoshop CS3 is the Brightness/Contrast command, which has gone from being one of the worst features to one that is actually quite useful. I'll show you what I mean with this example. Let's start with an image that's a little bit washed out.
Image by David Politi courtesy of iStockphoto
Notice how the face appears a bit flat, presumably a function of straight-on lightening as opposed to the fellow having no depth to his nose. Let's see what the new non-sucking Brightness/Contrast control in Photoshop CS3 can do to improve things.
To bring back some natural contours, let's reduce the brightness and spike the contrast a bit. Start by going to the Image menu and choosing Adjustments→Brightness/Contrast. That's right, Brightness/Contrast, a feature previously notorious for ruining images. Now it not only steadfastly refuses to ruin images, it actually corrects them. What a country.
To prove my point, you can click the Use Legacy check box to see how the command worked in the bad old days. Let's take the Contrast up to about +26 and notice here how we've already managed to clip highlight detail inside his face and shadow detail inside his hair. So, to compensate for the blown highlights, we'll reduce the Brightness value down to -25.
Although we've restored some contour to his face, we've clipped the shadow detail hideously. If we try it again with the Use Legacy turned off, the sliders automatically reset. We can take the Contrast value much higher (+57 in this case) without blowing a single highlight. The contrast is a bit harsh, however. To temper it a bit, we can take the Brightness value down to -44.
Notice now that none of the shadows get clipped. The reason is that the revised command employs a more subtle Contrast adjustment that compresses highlights and shadows instead of clipping them, combined with a Brightness setting that affects the midtones rather than the entire brightness range, as was the case in previous versions of Photoshop. The result is a dramatically improved--dare I say useful?--Brightness/Contrast command.
Categories
Photography
Comments (3)
Read More Entries by dekebytes.
You're a legend, Deke. Thank you for your excellent "One on One" courses, for your life-saving lynda.com tutorials, and for this great blog.
wibble xx
Well, it's early still, so I'm sure I'll be rethinking this advice over the coming months. But my early suggestions for using B/C are:
1) When you want to reduce the contrast (something Levels is ill-suited for).
2) When time is tight and you want to fix an image without a lot of fuss.
3) When you're all-in and two slider bars and some vague numerical feedback are about all your tiny mind can handle.
Now if only it was always there, always live, always tucked away in the bottom-left corner of the image. One day Photoshop will be like that. Seriously, I have this feeling, Photoshop 2010 is going to look very foreign. Short of skirt and long on jacket. (Easy to know, slow to reveal its intensity.) I'm looking forward to it.
Wow! Thanks for the tip. Now that B/C works better, in what situations would you use it instead of Levels?