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For those digital photographers interested in the dark side, an old SLR loaded with a fine-grain black and white film is a hard act to follow. The liquid smooth transitions and black velvet-like quality of dark low-key prints of yesteryear is something that digital capture is hard pressed to match.

Contrary to popular opinion – what you see is not what you always get. You may be able to see the detail in those dark shadows and bright highlights when the sun is shining – but can your CCD or CMOS sensor? Contrast in a scene is often a photographer’s worst enemy. Contrast is a sneak thief that steals away the detail in the highlights or shadows (sometimes both).

The best way to avoid these lighting problems is to adjust your aperture settings, your shutter speed and your film speed when shooting. Ok, so we're going to pretend we did do all of those things but find that we still have a problem image, which can happen when there is too much flash or too much sunlight.

Learn the fine art of isolating and preserving delicate and complex shadows for transplantation to exotic new backgrounds. This tutorial reveals how to introduce a world of exciting textures to your ever so subtle... not... studio tabletop.

The easiest way to avoid underexposed photos is to adjust your aperture settings, your shutter speed and your film speed when shooting. That's sounds pretty easy, right? Forget it. Photoshop was invented for the "I-can't-find-time-to-read-the-manual" photographer. Who cares if it's too dark or too light, we've got Photoshop!

You have a nice big beautiful photo. It is gorgeous. But you need it much, much smaller, and by the time the file is down to the right size, you might find that the image has started to take on a blurry look. This is a real problem with resizing images, but luckily in Photoshop there's a very simple solution.

On occasion, I'll be asked to convert a four-color image containing CMYK channels into four special colors or some combination thereof. Some clients feel that a special red or blue instead of the standard magenta or cyan will help to make the image stand out or give the image a difference color cast. Typically, the client will want to use a Pantone Process Blue, Pantone Process Magenta, Pantone Process Yellow, and a Pantone Process Black as replacement colors, but it could be any special color f...

Sometimes files come in that contain spot channels, and the client wants to omit them but keep the color look as close as possible with the four process colors. It can be quite expensive to print extra spot channels, and this is usually the rationale behind using fewer or no spot channels.

A touch plate adds a special color to existing CMYK color to enhance the color of a particular item in an image, making it appear richer in color. There are a couple of ways to add a touch plate; you may wish to experiment with both methods to see which gives you the best result.

Occasionally, you'll asked to change the color of one single object within an image. If you are changing the color of an image to an entirely different color than the original image color, the first thing you should do is have a look at the individual colors to see which color channel has the most information and shape. If the image is green, the dominant color will be the cyan or yellow. If I were asked to turn the image into a red, the bulk of my correction would use information from the cyan ...

Another typical request that I get from clients is that they feel the image color looks dull and they'd like to brighten up the image. A couple of easy ways to brighten up images are with the Hue and Saturation tool, and with the Selective color tool. Go in and take out the unwanted colors that dirty up other colors with either of these correction tools. For example, if the following colors look "dirty" or not as bright as you'd like them to, try removing the appropriate color.

When I speak of neutralizing images, I mean that I want to make the image true to its natural color. For instance, I want my blacks to be a black, not yellowish black or bluish black, but black black. I want my white areas to be white, not a pink tone or off-white. Neutralizing an image is an attempt to do this.

The Clone tool basically uses two points: one point reads the image information, and the other point writes that information. Adjusting the Clone tool brush size adjusts the size of the read and write points. The distance between the two points is adjustable, and you must take care to keep from repeating the same information as you brush along.

I am often asked to introduce more shape or texture into an image that is lacking it. Examples of images lacking shape may be very dark objects that have lost shape due to the amount or density of color in an image. Another example may be a fabric or material that is lacking shapenot that it isn't in the image somewhere, it just hasn't been exaggerated. Imagine a block of chiseled ice. If a client wanted to see all the many textures within that shape, various methods could be used to bring them ...

If there's one thing about editing digital photos that frustrates people, it's how to sharpen them.