Controlling color is at the heart of good digital photography. And controlling the brightness and contrast in your photograph is the key to establishing both mood and emotion. Knowing how to correct color and maintain important details in the lightest and darkest areas is critical to your success. In this chapter you’ll learn some of the image shaping techniques used by professional photographers.

Tones differentiate dark colors from light ones. The word highlight refers to the lightest tone in a picture, and shadow describes the darkest. A picture’s tonal range is represented by the colors and tones between these two extremes. A photograph’s quarter-tones are found between the highlight tone and the mid tone, and the three-quarter tones are located between the mid tone and shadow tone.

Look around your room and notice the brightest area. Unless a bright light is reflecting from a shiny surface, the lightest tone in the room will probably not be actual white. While the darkest part of your room may well register black visually, but printing a picture with totally black tones often results in the darker tones in the image lacking detail.

Seldom do extreme-contrast pictures deliver a full range of colors and tones correctly. Tonal separation in the darker parts of an image is necessary in order to produce this full range. In this chapter you'll learn ways to build distinction between the various tonal areas. Ansel Adams was well known for producing prints that delivered significant detail in both lightest and darkest areas. Most of his photographs were “full range” pictures.

In this chapter you will learn how to balance each image's colors and tonal values to produce optimal results.