Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 Studio Techniques

Step 5—Global Tonal Adjustments

Once the image has been color corrected, I can start thinking about the overall brightness and contrast (also known as tonality) (Figures 17.20 and 17.21). Before doing additional color adjustments, I adjust the tonality of the image with Curves (see Chapter 6) because darkening the image will often make the image more colorful, and adding contrast or brightening the image will often expose color problems that I might not have noticed before adjusting the tonality. At this point I work on the entire image because many problems that first appear to need a localized adjustment can often be fixed using a global adjustment, which saves me from having to spend the time to isolate areas of the image with a selection ...