DEVELOP - Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3: Streamlining Your Digital Photography Process - page 175

Tone adjustments
At er white balance, the next Develop tasks to perform are tone adjustments.

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“Tone” refers to the range of dark to light values in the image, without regard
to color. An image containing tones from very bright whites to very dark blacks
has a wide tonal range. Most “properly exposed” photographs can be expected to
show this, but of course, some images will naturally have a narrow tonal range.
More than any other aspect, tone sets the mood of the photograph.

Every capture contains a i nite amount of data, with dark and light and levels in
between, and though some contain a wider range of tones than others, once you
get the i le into Lightroom the goal is to optimize the captured tones to meet
your vision of what the i nal photograph should be. Whether the i nished photo
ultimately reveals a wide range of tones or a narrow one (see Figure 4-30), always
try to make the most of the available data. In the examples below, the photo on the
let contains a wide range of tones, while the photo on the right contains a narrow
range of tones.

Figure 4-30

An image with an overall light, bright appearance is referred to as a high key image
whereas one with mostly dark tones and deep shadows is low key .

h e tonal data captured is dependent on the accuracy of the exposure. Is the
photograph underexposed or overexposed? Is it too dark, or too light, overall?
Carefully evaluate the exposure of the photograph and determine how it relates
to the optimal tonal structure..

Contrast refers to the relationships of dark tones to light tones. Does the image
“pop” with depth and dimension? Or does it appear l at and dull? A high contrast
image contains a strong variation of light to dark tones, whereas a low contrast
image has tones compressed to a narrow range (see Figure 4-31 next page).