How to: Add Contrast and Saturation in PhotoFiltre

PhotoFiltre is a favourite program of mine. I have and use Picasa as my organizing software, PhotoFiltre as my "quick and dirty" editor, Adobe Lightroom, Elements and Photoshop CS2 as my high-end (read more complex) editors. If you are using PhotoFiltre, you can quite easily increase the contrast and saturation of your photos with minimal stress.

The Auto Gamma button will adjust both the brightness and contrast of your photo to what the program thinks should be correct. (I never use it!)

The Auto Contrast will adjust the contrast in the photo to a standard that the program thinks is correct for your photo. I generally try it. If it doesn't do what I want then I Undo it and go to the manual adjustments.

Manually adjusting the contrast is as simple as clicking on the Contrast + button once or twice. Be careful to not overdo it - you'll drive the shadows into complete blackness and the highlights (bright areas) into being "blown out".

Here is the Pyramid photo again with the contrast "way" overdone.


The colour saturation controls are used in the same way. Just click on the Saturation + button once or twice to boost the hue content of the photo. Again, don't overdo it or this time your photo will look like it's been hit with a dose of radiation and will glow in the dark!