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Adding Contrast to Give Photos More Life

This Article Features Photo Zoom

Images like this one of Mount Washington in New Hampshire have plenty of color, but look dull straight out of the camera due to a lack of contrast. For this version of the image, I added blacks in Lightroom.

Original capture before adding contrast.

Without bright sunshine, many outdoor photos seem a little lackluster. This is because there's a lack of contrast in the scene, which means that the tones captured in the image (primarily midtones) fit into a narrow range. This can be seen in the histogram, where you'll usually see a bell-shaped curve lacking either blacks or whites or both. Without rich blacks and bright whites, images are always going to appear a little dull. To get this type of image to really "pop," you need to do two things: Make a proper exposure and then add contrast in postprocessing. Fortunately, both are fairly simple tasks.

Same image after adding contrast with black and exposure sliders in Lightroom.

When shooting a scene with low contrast, be sure to expose it so that your midtones are exposed as midtones, or up to a stop brighter. Sounds obvious, and it is, but if you underexpose your mid-tones you'll have a hard time getting them to look right without introducing noise. After exposing your scene, check the histogram and adjust your exposure as necessary to get the peak of the bell curve to be in the middle or slightly to the right. It will still look dull, but we'll fix that in post.

There are many ways to add contrast to an image in postproduction, but probably the worst way is to just use the contrast slider in Camera Raw/Lightroom or the Brightness/Contrast adjustment in Photoshop. There are several techniques that are more nuanced, which I'll describe here. Some I've detailed in previous posts, but hey, I figure half of you reading this post weren't paying attention last year when this blog was brand new.

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