This is a particularly important project, as the way in which images are processed images has considerable impact on their quality - and always needs attention, optimising to mean basic adjustments (usually quite small) to tone and colour that are considered standard by most people. If the exposure given to the image is spot on, then there should be almost no need to alter or correct it. However, you may decide when you look at the image on the computer screen that the settings you chose on the camera menu could have been different. The camera's LCD screen, valuable though it is when shooting, is not the perfect display of the nuances of an image.
More important is the fact that several important image qualities such as brightness, contrast and colour. For this reason, it makes good sense to check each image to make sure that it is technically as good as it can be. This is the process of optimisation, and the best place to undertake it is during image editing. Indeed, it should be a regular procedure, the first thing to do once you have logged and saved your images on the computer's hard drive. It is simply, a good house keeping habit.
In optimising an image the following is done, not necessarily in this order:
- set contrast range
- adjust the brightness
- remove any overall unwanted colour cast
- make sure that whites and blacks are not tinged with colour
It is essential that the monitor is calibrated, and that the viewing conditions are appropriate. You must be able to rely on your eye when judging such qualities as overall brightness and colour cast, and the ambient lighting of the room will have a significant effect. Bright daylight is not a good condition, but equally neither is total darkness.
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