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One of the least written topics in digital photography is color and tonal correction. This is a bit surprising because depending on the image, it can be one of the easier tasks to perform.

Here’s a quick and simple technique for enhancing images using the Levels adjustment feature in Photoshop.

First the examples:

Before

After

Before

After

The changes are pretty obvious. The colors are crisper, more vivid, and any colorcasts have been removed. Contrast has also been improved.

Correcting both of these images follows the exact same five-step process:

Open the image
Select Image > Adjust > Levels
Choose the "white" eyedropper and in your image, find and select the highlight area. This is not necessarily an exact science. In the above examples, the white are at the top of the fire truck and the top white stripe of the flag were chosen.
Next, choose the "black" eyedropper and select a dark shadow area of the image. The dark shadow band above the black tire and the darkest blue area of the smaller flag were chosen.
Choose the "grey" eyedropper and select a midtone area of the image. The bottom grey area of the fire truck and the shadow in the lower left portion of the flag were chosen.

In most cases, steps 3 and 4 are enough, but sometimes you may need to further correct the midtone range using step 5 or the midtone slider.

You can obtain precise highlight and shadow areas by viewing the image's histogram (topic of another article), but you can probably do just as good a job by eye.

The fire truck and flag were pretty basic images that did not need much correction. You may find other images a bit more challenging. Only through experimentation and experience, however, will you achieve the results that suit your creative goals.

Bio:
Steven Kapsinow is editor of Jupiterimages' graphics.com and thecreativeforum.com.

Cafepress.com CEO and co-founder Fred Durham's vision for graphic design extends beyond monitors and white paper.

Cafepress.com was launched in 1999 to provide businesses and individuals with a way to share their creations and ideas with their communities through products. Customers can upload digital content to cafepress.com and then buy the products or open an online store to sell them. Cafepress.com also offers an online marketplace to help generate new business for customers.

SK: What are the most popular products companies want their name on? What are some hot new products companies want their name on?

FD: It totally depends. Our users are incredibly diverse. We're really in the market of self-expressive products, so companies use us and prefer things that are corporate-gifty (mugs and such). Others use us to express an opinion and prefer the forum of t-shirts and bumper stickers. Some use us to show they support a cause and like things they carry around like bags. Some prefer a comic expression; the thong underwear has been very popular for that. There's no one hot new thing everyone wants, there’s a list of hundreds of things.

SK: I'm sure technology has made it possible to print on certain products that could never have been printed on a few years ago. What are some of these technological advances?

FD: Pretty much everything we make was not possible 10 years ago. New technologies are still developing, and we are on the cutting edge. Digital print really got its birth with desktop publishing. The first Mac and the first laser printer really kick started the revolution. The printing industry fed on the desktop paper market. Over time, some pioneers have expanded their printers into other industries like signage, and digital presses have just started to compete with traditional offset printing. We abuse these sorts of technologies to print on substrates other than paper. The one legacy issue we are still fighting against is white. The printers were all developed for white paper and the technologies for ink and delivery systems still bias for white substrates. Too bad people did not want to write their reports on construction paper!

SK: Do companies mainly stick with their logos on products? What other images will companies use on merchandise?

FD: Many businesses do, but they don't sell anything. The creative and successful merchants make merchandise that reflects their community. A great example is the ASPCA. http://www.cafepress.com/aspca. They have logo merchandise, but shopping is more than product, its also content. They have tons of designs that express the heart of why there is an ASPCA -- how people love their pets. You do not have to be a member of the ASPCA to love the content and align with the mission. The merchandise reinforces the mission -- that's what makes our sort of business interesting -- whereas commerce is often considered to detract or cheapen communities, our sorts of products help build and strengthen them.

SK: What's the strangest object you've ever printed on? What gives you the most difficulty and why?

FD: The strangest printing experience is probably when we stole my cofounder's belt (off his body) to test a new leather printing technique -- it felt a little extreme but we really wanted to test right then and there. Difficult is anything with color for the reasons I mentioned before -- inks have been developed for white substrates. We are swimming upstream on that one. Rough surfaces are next for problems.

SK: What design elements should be avoided? What basic design elements should be adopted?

FD: Like many things, keep it simple. Bold, clean designs communicate better than busy, fuzzy ones. Do not fear white space.

SK: Are there graphics that just don't work at all? Have you ever had to say, "there's just no way ... "

FD: Extremely offensive content does not work for us. Things where the resolution is too low do not work.

SK: What resolution would you recommend?

FD: Depends on the substrate, but a rule of thumb is that it should look good when you print it on your desktop printer. I.e., 72DPI screen art looks chunky at print resolutions. 150-300 DPI tends to be the range that looks good in print (higher is always fine too). 150 can be too low for very fine detail, like 6 pt text on a mug.

SK: Is there a particular file format you prefer to work with or works best? Why?

FD: I like JPG and PNG. Tools tend to handle these formats well and consistently. JPG (low compression) is best for photos and high color images, PNG for line-art and designs with sharply contrasted edges.

SK: Is there a lot of back and forth between companies' creative departments and cafepress.com in trying to get the design just right for printing?

FD: No, if only because that's not our model. We're a self-service Web site. We eliminate many barriers to getting things made and offering them for sale -- the one barrier that remains intact is that you have to be able to design things. Our service is really for designers in that regard.

Bio:
Steven Kapsinow is editor of Jupiterimages' graphics.com and thecreativeforum.com.

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