What Is Contrast in Photography and How to Use It Correctly

By Sarah Rodriguez-Martinez

Related course: Photography for Beginners

Contrast in photography is one of the most important components of your image. Our article will show you how to make the most of contrast, whether by enhancing it or decreasing it.

A defining moment on your photography journey is when you really understand how contrast affects the images you take. Knowing how to manipulate contrast will change your photos for the better.

What Is Contrast in Photography

Contrast means difference. In the case of photography, the most common differences are achieved by changes in the tones (light) or colors that compose the image.
Contrast has been a key element from the beginning of photography. It is the degree of difference between the elements that forms an image.
Higher contrast will give your image a different feel than lower contrast, for example. But the type of contrast can also influence your images.
Here’s how.

Tonal Contrast

The best known type of contrast is tonal. It refers to the difference in brightness (light intensity) between the elements of the image.
Although it is important in all types of photos, tonal contrast is especially relevant in B&W images. These lack other types of contrast such as the color one.
If the image has both very dark and very bright tones, it has a high tonal contrast.

If the photo has a wide range of tones widely distributed from pure white to pure black, it is considered a medium contrast image.

And if it has a range of middle tones but it lacks the pure whites and blacks, the photo is a low contrast image.

Although tonal contrast is the best known, there are other types that are quite interesting too.

Color Contrast

Creating images with an interesting color contrast requires some color theory knowledge. But don’t worry! You only need the basics to start experimenting.
This is where Colour Schemes and the Colour Wheel come in.

The Colour Wheel is a chart widely used in arts. It simply represents the relationship between various colors.
Using Colour Schemes, you can figure out which combinations have the most contrast. The most contrasting combination is usually that of complementary colors.
It is really easy to recognise complementary colors since they are located opposite one another.
One common example is the juxtaposition of green and red.

If you don’t want to think about the color wheel, you can just classify the colors in two groups: warm and cold.
Combining a cold color with a warm one will result in color contrast.

Use Analogous Colours for Lower Contrast

There are other color combination that will result in less contrast. This is because they are harmonious, such analogous colors (colors that are next to each other on the color wheel).
The colors still have some contrast between them so they can be differentiated from one another by the viewer.

Another way to add contrast to a photo with similar colours is to include an element with a different tint/shade.
It won’t be a strong contrast but it will allow your subject to stand out.

One last thing about color contrast. Keep it simple.
Having less colors in your image will create a strong contrast effect because it looks more dramatic.

Contrast Through Textures

Differences between textures in photography are also a great way to add contrast.
You can combine rough with soft elements to give your image that extra punch.

An easy way to do so is by using the background. If you are taking a photo of an element with a lot of texture, place it in front of a soft background. It can be a clear sky or a flat wall.
If you don’t have a clear background, you can use the depth of field to soften it up. Using a wide aperture (f  3.5 or lower) and placing your subject farther from the background will create a shallow depth of field.
The background will appear blurry and soft and it will stand in contrast to the sharpness and texture of your subject.
On the other hand, if you have  a soft element, it will pop out in a textured background.

Conceptual Contrast

Conceptual contrast is abstract and much more subjective than the previous ones because it is based on ideas.
Images with this type of contrast have a strong story telling component that usually surprises the viewers.
It consists of putting together things that you don’t expect to see in the same image.

You can use conceptual contrast to highlight differences between elements that you find surprising, fun or that you want people to think about.
Some examples of conceptual contrast that are quite universal are old-new, big-small or artificial-natural.

Use Contrast to Convey a Particular Mood

Contrast is a key element to convey certain moods through your images.
High contrast images pop out, show textures in the subject and give a feeling of edginess, high energy and strength.
These are used a lot in street photography and nature photography.

Low contrast images tend to have a dreamy feeling. It is for that reason that low contrast works really well in outdoors portraits, especially if you are looking for a vintage look.

Before you take any photo, think about what mood you want to convey. And then look for the contrast that will make it stand out.

How to Practice With Contrast in the Field

For tonal contrast, something that really helps is to set the camera to black and white. This is a trick I learnt from Gala Martinez, a portrait photographer from Barcelona, and I really like it!
Taking out the color helps you focus on light intensity and how it affects the image. You can also try looking for strong light-shadow contrasts.

You can also start training with contrast by “building” your own scenarios. You can go to your arts and crafts store and get a couple of cardboards: white and black are great for tonal contrast.
You can then use them as backgrounds for objects of different colors that you already have at home and see how the different combinations affect the contrast of the final image.

You can also get coloured cardboards and combine them with objects with of complementary colors or the same color but different tint/shade.

How to Adjust Contrast in Lightroom

You can also adjust the contrast of the whole photo (global contrast) by using the Contrast slide in the Develop module of Lightroom.

You can add contrast by sliding it to the right. To the left you can decrease the contrast of the image.

If you want to have more control over the whites and blacks, you can use the White and Black sliders instead of the contrast one.
By making the whites whiter and the blacks blacker, you can increase the contrast of the image.

If you prefer to adjust just certain areas of the image, you can use the brush tool. This will give you a bit more control than the global adjustments.
Paint the area where you want to adjust the contrast and then move the contrast slider until you get the effect you are looking for.

You can easily visualize which area you have painted by checking “Show Selected Mark Overlay”.

As photographers, contrast is a crucial element to consider in all our shots because it helps us to convey a mood or a message to the viewer. Although tonal contrast is the best known one, there are types such as color and conceptual contrasts.
You can train yourself to see contrasts around you and you can even arrange the scenarios a bit to achieve the result you want. Lightroom and other post processing software are great tools to give that final touch to your image!

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How to Create a Matte Photo Effect in Lightroom

By Karthika Gupta

Related course: Effortless Editing with Lightroom

Lightroom is a powerful editing tool. The many different tools and techniques can be intimidating. But, there are easy ways to add that wow factor to your image. One simple editing method is creating a matte photo effect.
With Instagram filters and apps like VSCO, there is a huge trend to add a matte effect to images. This process is simple with Instagram or VSCO, but many people struggle to create a matte photo in editing software.
Adding a matte effect in Lightroom is quite easy. Here’s how.

There are many different ways to create a matte photo effect in Lightroom. We will look at the easiest and most common method. But before we get there, you might be wondering what exactly is a matte effect.

What Is a Matte Effect?

A matte effect in images used to occur in the old film days. If an old film image became underexposed, it would have a faded or as I like to say ‘grungy‘ effect. You can create this matte effect by rendering the blacks in an image grey instead of pure black.
Most of us don’t shoot in film anymore, but sometimes having that film emulation is a great way to experiment. You can get the look of film without having to invest in a film camera, or pay for processing and scanning.

The image on the left is from a film camera. The image on the right is from the Lightroom 

matte effect. The image on the right has a pronounced matte effect for this tutorial.

Using Tone Curve to Create a Matte Effect in Lightroom 

You can achieve the matte effect in Lightroom by using the Tone Curve in the Develop module. This powerful tool can impact the brightness and contrast of an image.

The original image we are going to edit for a matte effect.

Before you start adjusting the Tone Curve, I recommend that you do some basic editing. I like to adjust the brightness, contrast, and temperature/white balance for my images. This way, I have a clean image to work with, and the matte effect can be the final step in the editing process.
This process also helps if you are an advanced Lightroom user and have presets applied upon import.

Basic edits performed on the image.

Simple Steps to Create the Matte Effect

• Select the Tone Curve tool in the Develop module of your Lightroom catalog. The Tone Curve sits below the Basic panel. To avoid confusion, close the Basic panel. You can close this panel by clicking on the arrow button right next to the word ‘Basic’.

• Click on the bottom right-hand side of the Tone Curve and change the curve from a linear to a point. The Highlights, Lights, Dark, and Shadows sliders under the word ‘Region’ will disappear. This gives you a cleaner less-confusing tone curve to work with.

• Imagine the Tone Curve as having four quadrants with the middle of the curve as the center. Once you convert it to a Point Curve, you need to mark your first control point.

• Place a point on the curve close to the bottom left quadrant. It can be anywhere in that area. This quadrant controls the black tones in the image – muting them and adding haze as you pull the curve up.
• Select the point that is at the intersection of the X-axis and the Y-axis and pull the curve up. You will notice the blacks becoming grey and the image taking on a matte effect.

• For a hazier matte, you can lift this point on the curve above the diagonal dotted line of the actual curve. The actual curve is the dot you placed in the bottom quadrant in the earlier step. The higher you lift this point, the hazier and lighter the matte effect becomes, as you can see in the image below.

• For a darker or richer matte photo, you can pull the point below the diagonal dotted line. The further you pull this point, the deeper and more contrasted the matte effect will be.
• You can pull down the point on the top right-hand side of the image to bring down the whites and give those a matte look too. This dulls down the whitest areas.

• Keep tweaking until you get a pleasing result. A little tweaking of the Tone Curve goes a long way. Find a happy medium and select a look that works well with the image. The matte look, as with any editing, is a matter of personal preference. There is always a market for any photography type, so find one that works with your style aesthetics.
• Some people prefer the blacks toned down, and the whites toned down as an S-curve. The Tone Curve in such cases resembles a side-ways S and hence the name ‘S-curve’ matte look.

Images That Work With a Matte Effect

The matte effect works well for black and white photos. It does not always work well for photos that have a lot of color and saturation. These images tend to look too washed out and faded to my liking. But again, this is personal preference.
The matte effect also tends to work well with images photographed in full sun – a super bright image. You can tone down the whites or bright parts of the photo by using a matte effect.
If your image is already dark, a matte effect might make the image too moody. But this is my opinion. If that is your photography style, then rock that look.

Black and white before the matte effect on the Tone Curve

Black and white image after the matte effect on the Tone Curve

A colorful image without the Tone Curve matte effect.

After the matte effect on the Tone Curve. I don’t like how the colors are so toned down.

Creating a Preset for Faster Editing

A lot of us prefer to be out there taking photos over editing images all day. That is why batch editing and creating systems are a photographer’s best friend.
Once you find a matte effect that you like, you can create a preset to make matte editing easier. Doing a basic edit on your images before applying the matte preset comes in handy.
Select the ‘Save’ option from the Point Curve drop-down box in the Tone Curve

Name your Tone Curve presets to something intuitive. You can then access the presets within the Tone Curve section. You can even export your preset and share it with your friends.

Applying the matte effect on the Tone Curve is as simple as selecting the curve from the Point Curve drop-down box. You can always edit it further by playing with the sliders.
To see the effect before and after, you can use the X|Y (before and after) option in Lightroom.

Things to Note When Dealing With Tone Curves

• If you don’t place an anchor point for the Tone Curve before moving it, the entire curve will shift. This can cause an undesired effect. As you can see in the image below, the whole curve moved upward, and the picture looks washed out. 

• You can also create matte effects for individual channels of the RGB Tone Curve. When you drop down the Point Curve, you can select individual channels of red, green, and blue. The default is RGB (a combined channel of all three colors). You can select each color and add a matte effect for only that specific color in the image. This step might not be something you will use for editing all your photos, but it can be interesting to try. 

A matte effect for the Green tone curve only.

As you can see, adding the matte effect with the Tone Curve is an easy way to add a little character and fun to your images. You may not use this effect often, but I like to include some matte effect photos in my client gallery.
My photography style is light bright and airy, but a little deviation keeps me on my toes. It also helps me learn new editing tricks that I might use in the future.

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How to Take Epic Sunrise Photos with a Zoom Lens

A Post By: Simon Ringsmuth

Taking a beautiful sunrise picture might seem simple: just point your camera or mobile at the sun as it creeps over the horizon and you’re good to go. While this can certainly result in an interesting image, you can take sunrise pictures to a whole new level with a zoom lens and a bit of camera knowledge. If you have a lens with a longer focal length that goes to 200 or 300mm, you can get some epic sunrise pictures with a zoom that showcase the majesty of nature in the morning.

200mm, f/11, 1/500 second, ISO 100

Seek the sun

Before you can take a good sunrise picture, you need to do a bit of planning, so you know when the sun is going to come up. It also helps to know where to look so you’re ready when the moment hits. A quick internet search with your location and the words “sunrise time” will help you know what time to take pictures. As far as where to look, that’s up to you.
Of course, the sun always rises in the east, but it’s necessary to know exactly where it will come up relative to your specific location and time of year. To get the best results, you want to snap your pictures right as the sun appears on the horizon. If buildings obstruct your view, you’re going to need to find a location that offers an unobstructed view in the right direction.
To show how precise this process is, look at the picture below. I shot it as the sun was coming up, but the result is boring, bland, and entirely unremarkable.

200mm, f/6.7, 1/500 second, ISO 800

This was shot precisely one minute and 48 seconds before the picture at the top of this article. Why is it so boring? The answer is a simple truth of the business world: location, location, location. While I looked east for the sun, I didn’t realize it had already crested the horizon behind a grove of trees. I was able to take a vastly improved picture just by repositioning myself 100 meters from this point.

 When you go out to take sunrise photos, make sure you can actually find the sun!

Expose for the sun

Nailing the exposure on a sunrise picture is quite tricky. Imagine taking a picture of a flashlight in a dimly-lit room. You’ll end up with one of two results: 

• The room will be properly exposed while the flashlight is super bright.
• The flashlight will be properly exposed while the rest of the room will be entirely dark.

 It’s nearly impossible to get a properly-exposed flashlight and a properly-exposed room.

200mm, f/8, 1/30 second, ISO 280. Aside from being hidden behind the trees, this is also a poor 

shot because the sky and sun are just too bright. The foreground is fine, but all the color detail in 

the sky is mostly gone.

That is precisely what it’s like to take a picture of the sunrise, especially with a telephoto lens. What you want is a picture where the bright parts (i.e. the sun and sky) aren’t too bright, and the dark parts (i.e. the foreground) aren’t too dark. Basically you want an HDR image, but rather than shooting on a tripod and combining multiple exposures in post-production, you can do it with a single image by shooting in RAW.
Since RAW files capture much more picture data than JPEG files, you can fix many issues in Lightroom, Photoshop, Luminar, and other editing applications. The trick is to make sure you don’t lose any data to clipping, which happens when bright things are so bright that it doesn’t record data. The same can happen with dark areas too, but it’s usually not as much of a problem.

200mm, f/8, 1/1000 second, ISO 280. Exposing for the sun gave me a lot more wiggle room to 

fix the darker areas of the picture in Lightroom.

There are a couple of ways to expose for the sun so it’s not too bright. You can set your camera to Center-Weighted metering, which ensures the middle of your picture is not too bright or too dark. Another method (and the one which I prefer), is to have your camera evaluate the entire scene but use exposure compensation to under-expose by roughly two stops.
Regardless of how you meter the scene and set your exposure, the end result is the same. In your resulting image, you want the sun to be visible and not too bright. This means the foreground will be dark, but remember that you can recover everything you need when you process the RAW file.

Use a small aperture

If you have a high-end zoom lens like a 70-200 f/2.8 or a 300mm f/4, you might be tempted to shoot sunrise pictures with the largest possible aperture. Blurry foregrounds and backgrounds are great, right? So why wouldn’t you shoot wide open?
Contrary to what you might think, smaller apertures are better when taking sunrise photos. First, it helps make sure your entire picture is sharp. Bokeh is great on portraits but not so desirable on most landscapes. A blurry foreground (thanks to a wide aperture) can distract the viewer and leave the scene feeling kind of mushy as a result.

200mm, f/11, 1/250 second, ISO 100

Another reason to use smaller apertures, like f/8 or f/11, is that it gives you more control over your exposure. Remember, the sun is really bright, so you don’t need to worry about not getting enough light in your picture! On the contrary, you actually want to limit the amount of light, especially since you want the foreground to be underexposed. A small aperture helps with this.

Use a fast shutter speed

The sun moves fast – really fast. Or, rather, the earth spins fast. That’s what is actually happening when you see the sun come up. And just like any time you want to capture motion, you need to use a shutter speed that’s up to the task. Slower values like 1/30th and 1/60th will not only make exposure tricky, but result in a blurry sun as it speeds upwards on the horizon.

200mm, f/2.8, 1/4000th of a second, ISO 100. I broke my own rule about small apertures here,
specifically because I wanted the vehicle in the foreground to be out of focus. The trade-off for
such a wide aperture was a very fast shutter speed.

I recommend a minimum shutter speed of 1/250th, and even faster if possible. 1/500th is even better. If you are exposing for the sun, you might even use ultra-fast shutter speeds like 1/1000th or more. Of course, the foreground will be dim, but that’s fine since you can recover those shadows in post-production.
One nice thing about this is it means you don’t need to use a tripod. So that means one less thing for you to bring with you to your sunrise photo shoots. Handheld will work fine, even when zoomed all the way in. That’s because you should have a shutter speed that will compensate for any motion blur due to camera shake.

Be patient, but act fast

Once you have the technical aspects figured out, and you know where you want to position yourself to capture a sunrise, the final piece off the puzzle is patience. I recommend arriving early so you can make sure everything is situated properly. Bring some music or a podcast because you might be waiting a little while. However, it’s better to arrive early than scramble at the last minute.

190mm, f/2.8, 1/180th of a second, ISO 250. The sun wasn’t up yet, but I really liked the rich purple
and blue colors of the sky – an added bonus of arriving early and waiting. Note the large aperture.
It was required to let plenty of light in since there just wasn’t much light available.

As soon as you start to see the sun peek over the horizon, you only have a few minutes to get your shots. Remember to use a small aperture, expose for the sun, and shoot in RAW, and you should be fine. Go ahead and snap a few pictures with your mobile phone too. You’ll be amazed at how much more dramatic and impactful your pictures are with a zoom lens!

200mm, f/8, 1/1000th of a second, ISO 100. The sun isn’t in this picture but you can clearly see
the morning light on the clouds. I liked the silhouette of the tower against the glowing morning sky too.
You can’t get this shot with a mobile phone!

Do you have any other tips for sunrise photos with a zoom lens? Share with us in the comments. Also, I’d love to see your sunrise photos, and I’m sure the rest of the DPS community would also, so please share them in the comments too!