Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 Studio Techniques

Low Contrast On-Screen Appearance

If you've adjusted an image that will eventually be reproduced on a commercial printing press, your results will most likely look rather flat onscreen (lacking contrast). This problem is a temporary one since the image will gain contrast when it's printed on press (dark areas become darker and bright areas become brighter). You're welcome to adjust the top three sliders in Levels to get an acceptable image and then hold off on adjusting the bottom two sliders until you're done working on the image in Photoshop. That way, the image will have good contrast for the vast majority of the time you work on it and then the bottom two sliders can be adjusted right before saving the image so that it's ready to be reproduced ...