1.  The Significance Color Levels, Brightness, Contrast, Mid-
Tones and Highlights of an Image.

2. In This Chapter, you’ll learn on:
 Describe image composition in terms of
o tone
o sharpness
o colour scale
o arrangement
 Describe the image’s aesthetic appeal.

3. Image Composition
 Although image composition is quite subjective
depending on the message you're trying to convey, there
are some basic rules. There are four elements that come
into play when composing your image, tone, sharpness,
colour scale, and arrangement. By controlling and taking
advantage of each, you can make your composition
speak to your audience.
Tone
 Tone is the brightness and contrast of your image, the
interplay of light and shadow. By using light and shadow,
you can focus attention on or draw attention away from
your subject. You can use image tone to control where
the viewer's eyes are directed, and even the mood of the
photo.

4. Adjusting Brightness and Contrast
 In most cases, you will probably want to adjust the brightness
and contrast of the image, if only if certain areas. For example,
you might want to lighten up just the dark areas and maintain
the brightness and contrast of the rest of the image.
Brightness and Contrast
The best way to adjust brightness and contrast in Adobe Photoshop
is to go to Image > Adjust > Curves.
When the curve’s shape changes the image’s appearance
changes accordingly. In this case, a flatter curve provides a “softer”
image and a steeper curve a “harder”.

5. Adjust Color Casts
 An image with an erroneous gray balance will wind up with
what is called a “color cast”, which means that the entire
image will appear to be tinted a certain color.
 There are several tools for adjusting the gray balance in order
to eliminate possible color casts. One can be found under
Curves, Color Balance and Variations under the menu Image >
Adjust.
 Color Balance allows you to regulate each respective color,
while Variations allows you to view several versions of the
image with different compensations for the color cast.
 Variations allow you to modify just the highlights, midtones, or
dark areas of an image. You can also modify the hightones of
the images under Variations.

6. Adjust Color Casts
Brightness and Contrast
A: The image is not adjusted thus the
curve is straight.
B: The image has been “softened” by
flattening the mid-section of the curve.
C: The dark areas of the image have
been brightened. The rest of the image
is not affected.
D: The image has been made “harder”
by sharpening the mid-section of the
curve.

7. Sharpness
 Like tone, sharpness can be used to direct where in the
image you want the viewer's attention to be focused.
 By having your subject in focus, and the extraneous
elements of the image blurred, the viewer will naturally
be drawn to the item in focus.
 Depth of field will play a big part in how you control the
sharpness of your image.
 “Unsharp Mask” is the best sharpening filter in Adobe
Photoshop. This same filter is also available in many other
image editing programs. This tool had three settings:
o Radius,
o Threshold
o Amount

8. Sharpness
An image is softened when it’s converted into
halftone screens and in the printing process. Because
of that you need to sharpen the image even more.

9.  Scale
 Scale is simply the size relationship between the objects in your
image. You can use scale to make a statement about
something. For example, your image is to emphasize how
small an object is in reality, you can place an object that is
known to be small beside your object. On the other hand, you
could do a close-up on your object and the impression would
be entirely different.
 close up of a soccer ball to emphasize the size

10. Arrangement
How you arrange the elements of your image can make all
the difference in how it's interpreted. Useless junk will draw
attention away from the focus, cluttering the image
unnecessarily. Objects that are not essential to the
composition should be removed.

Use of colours and arrangement to bring focus to the object