I am always supplied photos that are either too-light or Too-dark & having to correct them manually in photoshop using all the different techniques.

I was having a particularly hard time with one photo & went online to see if I could find something to help me with it. And I found out about a new feature added to Photoshop CS that helps with correcting photos.

Go to: Image, Adjust, Shadow/Highlight and a dialog box will open. Many times you can use the default settings but if that is "too much" correction you can open the "Show more options" box to tweak it until you get it just right. It also has a preview option so you can see what effect your having on the photo before accepting the changes.

For me this has worked great for color photos as well as black and white.

Hope this can help someone out there.

Hm...is this something like using Levels? You can use a histogram to set your shadow, midtone, and highlights...then there's another bar for brightness/contrast. O.o

Yes it's a combination of those techniques, it just works in 1 click of a button. For those of us who need a better looking photo, without all the hassle.

I can never seem to get the photo to look right, when I do it manually. I am attaching a picture that was too-dark (taken inside) that I ran through two options. First pic is the original, second is the levels-auto, and third is the new "Shadow/Highlight" feature.

Now a professional may not use the "levels - auto" feature, but a novice who has no clue what they are doing probably would.

Please note that the setting was left on the "default" I did not tweak it at all. It is probably too-light now, but you can see how much detail was draw out of the dark background. You can actually see the faded knees on the jeans of the person in the background!

This is my son by the way, isn't he cute in his little outfit!