Tolerance is an interesting concept; it keeps our biases and unrealistic expectations in check and moderates our acceptance of others. In a social sense, it plays a very necessary part in a well-behaved society. But there is another interpretation of this word that is not so admirable; it represents a willingness to accept less than the very best.

The word tolerance describes the degree to which we are willing to excuse a lesser result or diminished behavior. Equipment specifications include this word to indicate how much “below-normal” performance we can expect from the product. It amazes me is just how much non-excellence we, as a society, have been conditioned to accept from published images.

On the page linked below, there are published photos. At first glance they will probably look OK, but when you roll your mouse over each image, you'll see the photos the way they SHOULD HAVE appeared.

Evaluate your photos for color accuracy and edit them accordingly. Mediocrity is a boring state. But your willingness to excuse poor color is actually settling for mediocre results. What many people are willing to accept as “normal,” is bit unsettling. Consider this fact: you have more ability to produce excellent color pictures with your personal camera and desktop printer than even professional photographers had just fifteen years ago.

Perhaps because so many images have been printed so poorly for many years, we no longer even notice poor color when we see it. I believe people like good color, and they recognize it when they see it, but poor color has been published for so long – we’ve just become accustomed to it. In this chapter I present multiple images that were published by respected stock photo services as print-ready color photographs. These photographs are corrected step-by-step for color and tonality in Chapter 7 of the book.

To get an idea of the kind of images I present in this chapter CLICK HERE.

About Alius Graphics