Tips for Processing Landscape Photos – from Basic Edits to Artistic Interpretation

By: Kim Rormark 

All professional, and many hobbyist photographers, post-process their photos. There are various reasons why you want to edit your photos, besides the fact RAW files need some level of processing, including:

• To fix minor errors made when you took the image.
• To make the image look more like you envisioned when you took it.
• To add your artistic touch to the image.
• Because image editing is fun, and is an important part of photography.

Landscape photography is often about being in the right spot at the right time. This is not always possible, so a little post-processing might help. “Why make it when you can fake it” seems to have become more and more common.
One question often raised, is how much editing you can do before you have over-processed your photo. Too much and your photo no longer represents the reality of the landscape.
It’s subjective how much editing is acceptable. Some argue the editing has gone way too far and is destroying photography. Others put their heart and soul into image editing. They try to get the most out of every detail in the photo, and to make their personal interpretation.
Landscape photographers are not photojournalists documenting reality. As such there should be plenty of room for an artistic interpretation of landscape photos. In the rest of this article, I’m going to discuss different levels of editing, using one of my own landscape photos as an example.

1. The leave as is approach – no editing

The easiest method is to save your files as JPG and do no editing at all. If you don’t want to buy an image editing software, or you simply don’t care to spend time on post-processing, that’s fine. It’s your decision. You can still enjoy the time you spend out in nature taking photos.
Obviously, with this approach, nobody can accuse your photos of not being real. But unless you learn some basic editing skills and post-process your images, you’re likely not to be regarded as a serious photographer.
Hardly any of the images with most likes on social media and photo sharing sites are unedited. In digital photography capturing the photo is just half the work, the rest is about post-processing techniques.

2. Basic editing

In my image (above), I realized I was sloppy with the composition when I took it. I had to fix this. Often one adjustment leads to another. Let’s go through the different steps I applied to this image.
The image above is the untouched RAW file straight out of the camera. Some photographers are happy with this result, and leave it there. After a closer look, I found there were several other things with the image I could improve. Because it’s a RAW file, I knew there was a lot of image data to work with.
Basic editing is supposed to enhance what’s already in the photo, not fix what is wrong. Ideally, you should get the shot as technically correct as possible in the camera. One nice thing about digital photography is how easy it is to make small adjustments after the shot. If you fail on the exposure or the horizon is not perfectly straight, no problem, you can fix it

Levelling a tilted horizon and verticals, cropping, and dust spot removal

While you edit, you can make simple adjustments to your composition, like levelling the horizon and cropping. By cropping, you can tighten the composition, and to some extent “move” elements, so they align according to the rule of thirds or golden mean.
In the photo below I have levelled the trees, as they were leaning slightly to the right. I did not notice that when I took the photo. Most photographers will not question if levelling the horizon, cropping, and removing dust spots are acceptable image editing. It’s part of the workflow.

Adjusting the White Balance (WB)

I took this image an early morning, at sunrise. The reflections from the clear blue sky gave the scene an overall blue color cast. At the computer, I remembered the scene as being warmer. Warmer is perceived as more pleasing. I could be wrong, because who remembers exactly what colors a scene had at the time they took the image?
Photographers often claim they edit their photos to represent how they saw the scene. It is probably more correct to say they edit their photos the way they wish they saw the scene.
So I decided I wanted my image to have a warmer color tone. I adjusted the White Balance by adding more yellow.
I could have achieved something similar by setting the camera White Balance to the Cloudy preset, at the time I took the image. Changing the White Balance after the shot is another advantage when you shoot your files as RAW. Either way, the result is altered, and to some extent, the reality is changed.
Although the significant impact changing the White Balance can have on an image, it is usually accepted as part of the post-processing workflow.

Increasing Exposure and Contrast

Because no adjustments are made to the RAW files in camera, the images look unfinished when you open them up on your computer. The preview on the LCD is an embedded JPG version of the photo, which often looks much better.
Even with modern digital cameras you don’t always hit spot on with the exposure. If you don’t get it right in-camera, with RAW files you can easily correct the exposure one two stops when post-processing.
My image is no exception, it looks flat, and needs a few more adjustments. So I increased the contrast slightly. When you increase contrast, the image tends to get a little darker. To compensate for this, I had to increase the exposure a tiny bit. You can see the result so far below.

Decreasing Highlights and increasing Shadows

One more thing that bothered me was the black chunk of trees to the far right. The trees have now become too dark with no details in the shadows. I fixed this by increasing the shadows slightly. I also lowered the highlights a little to bring out more of the texture in the ice. In the version below the trees to the right are no longer completely black.
With these last adjustments, the image starts to look pretty decent. So far so good. All of the edits I have done until now are within what most photographers will find acceptable.

3. Beyond basic editing

Oversaturated colors

Photos with saturated and vibrant colors are eye catching. If you want attention when you post your images on social media sites, it’s a good idea to boost the colors first.
At this stage, it was attempting to make the sunrise more beautiful. To me, it was already an awesome winter morning sunrise. But I felt I could make it even better – with some over-processing.
I did this simply by increasing vibrance and saturation significantly. The image now has an entirely different feel. To me, it looks fake. But I bet this version would have received more attention on my social media sites if I posted both versions there. I have seen this happen with some of my other images before.
With this level of editing, the discussions start as to whether or not the image represents a realistic landscape. It can be your artistic interpretation of the scene, but to me it’s not authentic anymore.

4. Photo editing artistically

Adding texture for a complete different look

In the next image I have used my artistic freedom as a photographer and artist. I blended in a couple of texture layers and photo filters with the original image. By using textures properly, you can create some interesting effects on your images.
If this is a realistic landscape photo or not, is no longer a relevant question. It’s not, nor is it supposed to be. But you can discuss whether or not you like this style. While all the previous edits were made in Lightroom, the last two versions were made in Photoshop, as Lightroom doesn’t have the layers function which is needed.

Composite of several images makes this surreal piece

The last version of my image is a composite. Only a few elements are left from the original, but you can tell it’s still there. The result is so extreme that nobody can blame you for faking a realistic landscape image. Everybody know this is a creative piece of art. Again it’s very subjective whether like the style or not. Compositing is a whole new level of photo editing, it’s not for everyone.
When you create composites, you need many of the same skills as when you photograph. For a balanced composite, you must know about composition techniques and how to deal with light and shadows, as well as colors.

With digital photography it’s possible to create the image you want. Your imagination and skills are your only limitations. The general trend is bold and vivid colors get a lot of attention, at least among some photographers. Whether you want to follow this trend or not, is your decision. The fact is that more of the images you see online look similar, due to the same post-processing techniques. It’s getting harder to be recognized online unless you make something different.
As a landscape photographers you have a few challenge to tackle because the elements of nature are limiting. Light and weather conditions might not be as you wish when you’re at your dream scene. Maybe you never come back to the same spot again. In such a situation it’s tempting to fix the light (slightly) in post-production. In other words, to fake reality like I did with the oversaturated image.

Original edit

Creative edit

Photography is art, so it’s not wrong if you choose to do so, but be open with what you have done. Don’t pretend you experienced the sunrise of your life if you didn’t. In the end, it’s up to you what you’re comfortable with. Nobody can take away your creative vision.
You can do more advanced editing in Lightroom than I have shown in this tutorial. In Photoshop however the possibilities are endless. You can manipulate, remove, and add content to your images. With such drastic steps, you’re not only altering the reality, but you’re cheating. That’s if you claim your photo is real.
Now it’s your turn. What’s your opinion about how much you can edit landscape photos? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Original edit

Creative edit

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How to Edit Food Photography Images Using Lightroom

By: Darina Kopcok 

To edit food photography it requires a bit of a different approach than you might take with other types of photography, like portrait or landscape. The objective is to keep the food looking as fresh and appetizing as possible, which can take a subtle but considered hand.

Before and after a subtle edit of a food photo.

Although there is always room for style and artistry, the more real your subjects look, the better. Lightroom is the program of choice for most food photographers. It’s intuitive and relatively easy to use and offers most of the tools required to make great food photos.
For this article, I will walk you through how I make global adjustments to a food image in Lightroom’s Develop module. Workflow is something that is individual to each photographer. This is how I approach editing my food photography, however, you may opt to do things differently. Hopefully, you will find some takeaways that will help you edit your own images.
I’ll be editing this image of an apple pie. This is the shot straight out of the camera. Like all RAW images, it lacks contrast and needs a bit of pizzaz.

Final image.

The Histogram

It’s important to have a basic understanding of the histogram in order to make adjustments to the exposure and tones in your image. The histogram is one of the key tools available for analyzing your image. It provides a graph of the density values of a given image. The histogram shows the relative quantity of pixels at each density value.
The far left point of the histogram is pure black and the densest, and the far right point is pure white with no density. A big peak in any of these regions means that the image has a lot of pixels at that particular density. An open gap in the histogram means that there are no pixels at that density.

The distribution of these tones will tell you about the overall exposure of the image. Most images look best if they contain both dark and light values. Generally, without some dark and light values, the image may lack contrast and look flat.
If you have a strong peak at the black or white end of the histogram, your image could be under or overexposed. However, it really depends on the individual image and the desired aesthetic. For example, blown out whites has become a “thing” in recent years. A dark and moody shot will have a lot of pixel density at the dark end of the spectrum.

Cropping

Before you can start making global adjustments to your image, it makes sense to crop and straighten it first. One tip is to shoot a bit wider than what you want for your end result so you can tweak your composition in post-production. You also may want to crop it to a certain aspect ratio – say 4×5 or square for Instagram.

First,  make sure that your horizon line is straight.
My horizon line in the apple pie image was already pretty straight. I used the crop tool to check it and also brought the crop in slightly on the left-hand side to cut off a little bit more of the pie. To access the Crop Tool in Lightroom, click on the grid symbol under the Histogram in the top panel (or just hit R, the keyboard shortcut). This will allow you to crop your image by bringing in the corners with your cursor.
While this tool is activated you can click “O” for the shortcut to bring up several compositional overlays like the Phi Grid or Golden Spiral to help you get the most out of your composition.

Lens Corrections

The Lens Corrections options fix optical distortion caused by the position of your subject in the frame, or where your camera is positioned relative to your scene. Lightroom supports a variety of lenses to automatically calibrate with this function.
I always check off Enable Profile Corrections before I start making adjustments to my image. Checking this box automatically brings up the camera profile for the lens used to create the image, in this case, the Canon EF 24-70mm.

White Balance

I recommend setting your White Balance in-camera or shooting with a gray card and adjusting it in post-processing. This removes incorrect color casts and ensures that your whites and colors render accurately.

You can correct your White Balance in Lightroom by taking the eyedropper tool (circled in red below) and clicking on an area in the image which appears neutral. This will the adjust the color temperature in the whole image, and you can tweak afterward if it’s not quite as you desire. It’s not as precise as the other options but can work well for food your food images.
Also, in food photography, White Balance can be used creatively, depending on your image. I tend to favor a cooler approach to my food photography. Cool colors give a crisp and fresh feeling to the image, which means I tend to edit more towards the blue or cyan.

Using the white balance eyedropper tool in Lightroom to color correct

Keep in mind that the goal is to make the food look as fresh and appetizing as possible, so you don’t want the food to look blue. Food photography looks best when there is a balance of tones. I keep my surfaces and props on the cool or neutral side and work with my food subjects individually to keep it as realistic looking as possible.
When composing my apple pie image, I chose a vivid blue background to complement the golden tones of the pie. Not only does this create a balance of tones, blue and yellow are opposite on the color wheel and are a great combination of colors for food photography.

After White Balance color corrections.

Exposure and Contrast

The next slider is Exposure, which affects the brightness of the range of tones in your image. To see bright or dark details, pull the Exposure slider to the left, or the Blacks slider to the right. If the bright areas look muddy, or the shadows still need more light, move the sliders to points where the image looks good overall.
I often make this adjustment initially and then may scale it back once I have made some other adjustments.
Contrast can be boosted in the Basic Panel or in the Tone Curve panel, which I will get to in a moment. It’s important to add some contrast, as RAW digital files are flat by nature.

After slight Exposure and Contrast adjustments.

Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks Sliders

This panel is where you may end up doing a lot of tweaking before you settle on a look that you’re satisfied with. It will give you a more precise balancing of tones than simply relying on the Exposure slider.
In my shot of the apple pie, the highlights were too bright, and the shadows too light for the look I was aiming for, which was a darker mood. My style tends to be dark and moody with bright food.  I brought the highlights down and boosted the whites, while also bringing down the shadows and blacks to create the ideal balance for the aesthetic I was going for.

After Highlights and Shadows were tweaked.

Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation

Clarity is a most important slider in Lightroom when editing food photography. Clarity gives your image contrast in the mid-tones (edge details more specifically) and adds detail. You probably wouldn’t edit a portrait with +50 clarity, but you can easily do so with food photos. Keep in mind that overdoing the clarity can make food look dry and unappetizing. For this edit, I put my clarity at +42.
Vibrance is also an important slider in food photography post-processing. It’s a better tool for your edits than saturation because it’s is more subtle. It tends to adjust the less saturated colors without intensifying the ones that are already saturated.

The difference between Vibrance and Saturation is that it affects the intensity of the colors. Red becomes redder, green becomes greener, and so on. Vibrance will first boost the saturation of the muted colors and then the other colors. It adjusts the less saturated tones without over-saturating the ones that are already saturated. Whether you use Saturation depends on the image and the look you are going for, but in general, a conservative approach is what works best when editing food photography.

Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation adjusted.

It’s easy to quickly overdo the Saturation and make your image look ugly. If I use the slider at all, I might only nudge it up a tad to about +5 or +6. You’ll notice that I actually brought down the Saturation slightly in this image, so the blue looks a little less intense.

Tone Curve

The Tone Curve is often challenging to new users, but it’s one of the most powerful tools that Lightroom has to offer. Getting in-depth with it is beyond the scope of this article, but let’s look at the basics.
The Tone Curve is a graph that maps out where the tones in your images lie. The bottom axis of the Tone Curve starts with Shadows at the far left side and ends with Highlights on the far right end. The mid-tones fall in the middle, in a range from darker to lighter. The tones get darker as you move lower, and brighter as you move up the axis.

Assess the mid-tones in your image. Are they bright already? If not, click on the middle of the tone curve and bring the point up. If they are already bright or too bright, bring the curve down slightly. Move on to the rest of your image. Typically you will find that your curve looks somewhat like a soft S (see screenshot below).

You can control the lightness and darkness of your tones by adjusting the Point Curve itself or by Region Curve. The Region has sliders for each part of the tonal range. As you drag each slider, the curve and the image both change.


To make adjustments with the Point Curve, click on the area you want to affect to create an anchor point at which to control the tone. Dragging the point up lightens that tone; dragging it down darkens the tone.

After Curves.

You will also notice that there is an RGB option in the lower-right portion of the point curve. This helps you to individually edit the Red, Green, and Blue channels. It performs the same types of adjustments to brightness and darkness, but on each separate color. This can be utilized if you want to edit a color individually, or give your image a certain type of color overall.
To choose tones directly from the image, there is a handy tool called the Targeted Adjustment Tool. This is located in the top left of the Tone Curve.
Click on it and move the cursor over the image. The tool shows you the tones under the crosshairs. If you click and drag it up and down the image, you will affect the tones like those under the crosshairs. For example, if you drag vertically on an area with light pixels, all of your image’s highlights will be adjusted.
If you’re getting started with learning the Tone Curve, play around with the Region sliders and take note of how the various sliders affect the curve. Whichever approach you choose, be sure to watch the histogram as you make changes, to ensure that you are not losing important detail.

HSL Adjustments

HSL stands for Hue, Saturation, and Luminance. This is where you balance the colors in Lightroom. However, color adjustments are usually more subjective than tonal adjustments, as color gives a photograph a sense of mood.

There are two ways to make color adjustments in this panel; you can adjust them all at once under HSL/All, or each color individually under the Color tab at the top of the panel.
The Hue tab or section is where you choose how warm or cool you want each color in your image to be. For example, I find that greens almost always look off, so I slide the greens slightly more towards the left or right to get them looking more realistic. To add more warmth, that is, more yellow to your greens, slide it to the right. For a cooler hue, sliding it to the right will add more blue.
Whereas the Saturation slider in the basic panel adjusts the color of the whole image, the saturation sliders here adjust each color individually.
If you adjust a color to be more saturated, then it will affect the saturation of that particular color throughout the whole photo. Whether you’re working in the basic panel or the HSL panel, saturation requires a light hand.

In the image of the apple pie, I thought that the blue looked a bit more on the magenta side, so I slid it towards the left. This hue gave me a blue that worked better with the orange tones in my picture.
Lastly, Luminance affects the brightness of the color. I find these sliders more valuable than the saturation sliders and work with these first.

After HSL adjustments have been applied.

Working in Lightroom is all about balance, and the same goes when working with the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance adjustments.

Noise

Noise is the grain that can appear throughout an image. It’s not often a problem when you are shooting with artificial lights, but when working with natural light, grain can appear in your images if you are shooting at a higher ISO or you didn’t get enough light onto your sensor.

Working with the Noise slider in Lightroom will minimize the grain and give your image a smoother look. But, be careful not to push the slider too high, as it can result in a plastic look. For the apple pie, I set the Noise at +20, as it was shot in studio with a strobe.

Post-Crop Vignetting and Dehaze

If you are editing a darker, moodier image, Post-crop Vignette is a must. By darkening the outer corners of the frame, you draw the viewer’s eye towards the center of the image and your subject.
To darken, move your slider to the left. The midpoint slider controls how far in the dark edges get to the center of your photo. Feather controls how soft or hard your vignette will look. A softer vignette looks more appealing than a hard, “spotlight” effect.

Vignette applied.

Sharpening

Sharpening should be the last editing step. It adds contrast between pixels and edges, thereby adding definition and creating a more refined look.
NOTE: It’s not meant to make a blurry image look sharp!

Also, sharpening should not be applied to the whole image. In food photography, there is not much of a point in sharpening the props and the background, etc. The focus is on the food, therefore, this is what we sharpen.
To do this in Lightroom, mask out the image to select the areas of the image you want to sharpen rather than sharpening the whole image. You do this by holding down the Alt/Option key (it will show you where the sharpening is being applied, the white areas) while clicking on Masking in the Sharpening panel. Slide it to the right. The farther right you go, the less of the image it will sharpen. For my image, I left it at +76.


Also read: How to Make Your Photos Shine Using Clarity, Sharpening, and Dehaze in Lightroom

In Conclusion

So here is the final image! Not drastically different than what I began with, but overall a more balanced and refined looking photo and consistent with my style of food photography.

Before and after editing. Note how subtle the differences are here.

When it comes to post-processing your food photography, the best advice I can give is that whatever your style, strive for a natural look for your subject. Ask yourself this question, “Looking at this image, do I want to eat that food?”
The answer should unequivocally be yes! If so, you’ve done a good job.

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Exposing to the Right

By: Elliot Hook 

Exposing to the right (often refferred to as ETTR) is a technique that seems to polarise opinions across the internet so you can find plenty of examples of people supporting its use and an equal number of people claiming it adds no value.  The principles of the technique however do hold value and are valid to consider when out taking images.  As it is a technique that I regularly employ when photographing landscapes I wanted to share the reasoning behind it, and show an example of the benefit it can bring.
The term ‘expose to the right’ refers to the histogram associated with an image.  Typically, for a shot to be well exposed, we are taught to aim for an even spread of tones across the histogram, peaking in the middle, and tapering off at the edges.  When ‘exposing to the right’, the idea is to push the peak of the histogram as far to the right hand side as possible, i.e. overexpose the image, without clipping any highlights.  The resulting file, when processed back to the correct exposure, will contain more tonal information and less noise in the shadow areas, maximising your image quality.

Left: A histogram showing a 'correct' exposure. Right: An 'exposed to the right' histogram

Let’s consider the CCD or CMOS sensors found in most digital cameras.  Typical DSLR sensors can capture seven stops of dynamic range and produce 12-bit raw image files, capable of recording 4096 tonal levels in each red/green/blue channel.  The ability to record such a large number of tones should guarantee smooth transitions between the tones within the resulting image, however it is not quite that simple.
Whilst you might think that each of the seven stops in the range of the sensor record an even number of tones throughout the dynamic range, you would be mistaken.  F-stops are logarithmic in nature meaning that each stop records half of the light of the previous one.  Practically, this means that the brightest stop records half of the possible number of tones, i.e. 2048, the second stop records half again, i.e. 1024, and so on until the seventh stop that records only 32 tonal levels.  Therefore, if you underexpose an image and correct the exposure during in post processing, the tonal transitions in the darker areas will not be as smooth, and the risk of degrading your image quality is much higher.  If you overexpose your image, by pushing the histogram to the right, you will capture much more tonal information that results in much better image quality when correcting the exposure in post processing.
The diagram below tries to illustrate the distribution of tones for each stop of the dynamic range of the sensor.  The top image shows the seven different stops capturing different portions the dynamic range from the darkest through to the brightest tones, however the bottom diagram shows those stops but sizes them relative to the number of tonal levels that each stop captures.  As you can see, number of tonal levels captured by the brighter stops is significant compared to the stops at the lower end of the dynamic range.

A tangible way of demonstrating the difference in the amount of tonal information recorded is to take two images of the same scene, one underexposed, one overexposed and compare the file sizes: the overexposed raw file will be larger that the underexposed shot as it contains more data.
Let’s look at an example.  The image below shows two unprocessed shots taken within seconds of one another, with their associated histograms.  The shot on the left is underexposed and the shot on the right is exposed so that the histogram is pushed up to the right hand side, as far as practically possible wihout losing any highlight detail.

Left: Underexposed image. Right: Exposed to push the histogram to the right

During processing, the exposure of each shot can be adjusted to give what seem to be two identical images.

Left: Underexposed image. Right: 'Exposed to the right' image. Both undergone exposure correction during post processing

However, when you look in detail at a 100% crop of an area of each image, you can see a huge difference in the quality of the final image.  The shot that was underexposed (i.e. exposed to the left) shows much less smooth transitions between tones and much more noise in the darker areas than the image that was exposed to the right.

Left: Underexposed image. Right: 'Exposed ot the right' image. 100% crops to demonstrate diference in image quality.

Images that have been exposed to the right will need some additional post processing to correct the exposure, but as you can see, a bit of extra thought when determining your exposure and some extra steps to correct it during post processing can result in image files with smoother tonal transitions and reduced image noise.
It is not a technique that is universally applicable to all types of photography, as there is a risk of clipping highlights if care is not taken when exposing your image.  Exposing to the right is most suited to when photographing in a controlled environment, for example, when shooting landscapes, using graduated filters to ensure that all highlights are contained within the dynamic range of the sensor.  The last thing you want to do is to lose highlight detail when trying to maximise your image quality.
So give it a go, take two images at different exposures (one exposed normally, one exposed to the right) and see if you can see a difference.  Understanding the performance of your individual sensor in such a way is a step further to knowing how to get the most out of your camera.

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Understanding Tonal Range in Photography

By: Adam Welch  

Understanding tonal range in photography can be the last thing on a photographers mind.
As we progress on our particular paths, there can be times when even the most mindful of us take some things for granted. The simple elements are sometimes overlooked first – such as a sloppy tripod setup or assuming our cameras settings are where we last left them.
In the same vein, the steadfast technical concepts of our photo work are misunderstood, misinterpreted or worse – completely forgotten. This malady spans every level of skill and afflicts both pros and hobbyists alike.

Take as an example the most basic building block of any photograph; light. In our weirdly flexible digital age of post-processing, we can sometimes forget what is happening with the luminance values of our images.
Our photographs are displays of contrast between light and dark, but the distance between the two are virtually limitless.

A Brief Word on Tonal Range

All that we’re talking about here today is the measure of brightness from complete dark to complete light. The range between the different brightness levels within our photos determines its degree of contrast. Take a look at this tonal scale:

We move from complete darkness on the left (black) to complete light (whites) on the right. This scale applies for both color and black and white photographs. Now, let’s talk about each of these values and how they relate to your photography.

Highlights

Traditionally, I’ve always thought of highlights as the brightest portions of an image, which is not the case. At least not the case to the utmost extent. In truth, highlights can be considered the areas of a photograph which consist of high luminance values yet still contain discernible detail. Here’s an example of highlight luminance values:

Notice that even though these areas are bright, there is still some discernible texture and detail to be made out within the bright spots. If we were to increase the exposure, in camera or with post-processing, it would become so bright that it would lose detail entirely, which brings us to our next point.

Whites

If we increase the brightness to the extent that our highlights become ‘blown out’ (where details are invisible), we have complete white.
Even if the white area doesn’t appear white, it may be considered a total ‘white area’ due to the lack of detail. The following is an example of luminance considered total white:

Depending on your photograph, it may or may not be desirable to push the exposure to the point of white-out. We’ll talk more about this as we discuss the relevance of tonal range in regards to constructing your images.

Midtones

A mid-tone is precisely that – all luminance values that are not dark or light are considered to be mid-tones. Most of the time our camera meter will attempt to expose for this average brightness when in ‘Automatic Mode.’

While mid-tones help to ensure much information is contained in an image, a photograph consisting of only mid-tones lacks dynamics.

Shadows

Areas that appear as shadows are closely related to highlights albeit in the opposite direction. Shadows are the areas of a photo that are dark but still retain a level of detail.
The above photo is a perfect example of more information in the shadow areas, so let’s use it one more time:

These darker areas still possess information seen by the viewer. However, if we darken them to the point where that detail gets lost or ‘burnt out,’ then…you guessed it, they become a completely black luminance value.

Blacks

Any portion a photograph that has zero luminance is considered to be black. Much like the complete white areas earlier, these points within our images don’t have to be utterly devoid of color to be regarded as pure black.
Let’s look at some shadows that are completely burnt out and retain no detail whatsoever:

Completely black areas are so dark that you can see nothing. Consider them the ‘dark abyss’ within a photograph. Having these areas within your image isn’t necessarily a bad thing, so let’s talk about that now.

Luminance Values and You

If you ever open a conversation among a group of photographers about the suitability of brightness levels within a photograph, you’d see that the schism is split. Some photographers feel that images should contain no areas of complete black or complete white – that all portions of the photograph should present some level of detail for the viewer.

Still, others contend that it’s perfectly fine to either burn or blow out some luminance values for the sake of contrast. Doing this means that there is an area of complete black and complete white so that all the other luminance values fall somewhere between those two absolutes.
While it’s true that it is often desirable to deliver the maximum amount of visual information to your audience, this is not always the case. There are times when a crushed and burnt out shadow or a super-bright highlight are just what you need to bring a photograph home.

Final Thoughts

I’m happy to profess my opinion that there is no such thing as a set technique for each photograph you make. It might seem like a simple thing to remember, but it’s easy to overlook the importance of how different levels of brightness affect an image. Let’s take a quick run back through what we’ve learned about luminance values:

• Highlights – Bright areas within a photo that still maintain detail
• Whites – Areas of extreme brightness where there is absolutely no information(detail) remaining
• Midtones – These are neither shadows or highlights but rather a middle value of luminance
• Shadows – Darker areas of the image that still maintain detail
• Blacks – Completely ‘burnt out’ portions of a photo that contains absolutely no detail

Like most concepts in photography, it’s essential to have a full understanding of the tonal range falling within your photos. You should use this knowledge to strive for technical excellence and also so you know when to break the rules in favor of fulfilling your creative vision.
How do you make use of tonal range in your images? Share with us your thoughts and images in the comments below.

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