The Highlights, Shadows, and Clarity sliders were all that were required to transpose this shot from average to special.Ĭlarity is the process of accentuating detail. Sometimes, just massaging the existing detail does the trick. Your post-production challenge is to emphasize the most important details recorded inside the tones captured by your camera and then distinguish them sufficiently for the printer, your monitor, or the Internet to reveal.īringing a picture to life doesn’t always require additional touchup procedures. This introduces a complex but interesting phenomenon. What this means is that the editing part of the photography process needs MUCH more attention than the image capture process. The range (light to dark) of your camera is immense compared to any reproduction process. The camera’s light-capture range is even beyond the scope of human vision. Each of these other outlets is limited to reproducing just 8-bits (256 levels) of each color. That’s more than any publishing resource (computer monitor, inkjet printer, Internet, or even any printed publication) can reveal. As a matter of fact, it can capture up to 16,000 levels of tones and colors. Your camera can capture more detail than your eye can detect and more tones than your monitor can display. No kidding! Technically, 256 tones are too many.

While that doesn’t sound like much, you should know that the human eye can only perceive a little over 100 distinct levels of each color. The purpose of this article is not to get geeky about the science, but to assure you that there is an amazing amount of detail that you can recover from seemingly poor images.Ī basic JPEG image can display more than 250 tones in each color. No painting or cloning tools were necessary. Adjustments made to the image in Alien Skin’s Exposure X4.5 revealed detail in the sunlit walkway and darkened archway that appeared lost in the original capture.

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