What's new
By:
Photoshop Gurus Forum

Welcome to Photoshop Gurus forum. Register a free account today to become a member! It's completely free. Once signed in, you'll enjoy an ad-free experience and be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Brightness/Contrast!


W

whiteout75

New Member
Messages
3
Likes
1
Hello,

New forum member here. Moderately experienced user of PS. I have what some might think of as a strange (or possibly daft!) question:

I've understood from experience that AutoContrast, for example, doesn't necessarily give a desired result (it might over-Contrast), and certainly not AutoLevels either.​
This MAY be a simple case of non-Photoshop-related settings - i get that it could be that. For example, monitor brightness, and phone settings.​
I am struggling to reach similar Brightness/Contrast settings between PC screen and phone screen to the point that i can no longer tell which is more aligned to good/accurate/printable levels of each.​
As a result, some printed images are coming out too dull, or without enough contrast, and sometimes even over-satured.​

What i am wondering, aside from messing about with settings on monitor etc. - is there a visual guide which will give me rough, but good guides as to how to set my Brightness and Contrast in photos?
For example, a landscape photo that contains good and accurate brightnesses, contrasts, and hues in one photo (for example) that will print well, and that i can match some of my photos to as i work/edit?
I totally get this is a question i could best answer myself by experimenting.
And i totally get that a lot of it is also down to an individual photographer/editor's choice, or these levels can be exagerrated to achieve a particular effect.

Not sure i've explained myself well at all. It's just that i've struggled for so long with variations in brightness, contrast, and hues, that i think my mind has lost sight of what is good! And so a lot of my edits are either too dark, too bright, too contrasty, or too saturated as i try to set them to levels i think are ok.

Can anyone give me any pointers at all? Assuming you understand my question! Sorry for the ramble.

Many thanks for reading.
 
Tricky to suggest a 'one method fits all' but you may find the 'Histogram' useful...

WINDOW > HISTOGRAM

The 'brightness' of an image will look different to everyone who sees it and every device will render it differently too but in order to establish a guideline, or a baseline....at least something to aim at you could use the 'Luminosity' value of the whole image as a rough average 'brightness' level.

Adjusting each image to the same [ your prefered ] Luminosity value would give you at least a starting point, each image should be as bright as the next regardless of the actual content.
Luminosity [Median] values range from 0 (All black) to 255 (All white) so 127 / 128 could be a good value to aim for.

Once you open the 'Histogram' window click the 'burger' icon top right to open the options menu.
Select 'Expanded View'.
Select 'Luminosity' channel from the dropdown list.
The 'Median' is what you want to keep an eye on.

HISTOGRAM_01.png

There is more than likely a better way but for something simple and consistant the Histogram is a good 'rough' guide.

Regards.
MrToM.
 
MrTom,

Many thanks for your reply here. I have had a little play around and yes, this fits the bill, certainly for simplicity - i'm grateful. Simplicity was what i was after, really!

Thanks also for understanding what i was trying to explain.

Best wishes.
 
No worries, thanks for letting us know it worked out for you.

Regards.
MrToM.
 
Back
Top