The Digital Photography Workflow Handbook

Enhancing Midtone Contrast

We have already used a classic S-curve many times to improve image contrast. This is generally a reliable method as long as it doesn’t produce dense shadows or over-bright highlights. Midtone contrast is generally the most important aspect of this type of correction.

Figure 8-117. Mono Lake. Increased midtone contrast would certainly improve this image.

The image in Figure 8-117 displays typically low midtone contrast. Using the Photoshop Shadows/Highlights command, we set the Amounts sliders for Highlights and Shadows to zero and move the Midtone Contrast slider to “+34” (Figure 8-118). (The Highlight sliders are not shown ...