Digital photography is really a two step process. Step one is taking the photograph itself, and that this you need to have a good understanding of the manual settings of your digital camera. The second step of the process is the postproduction phase. Using Photoshop you can adjust the contrast brightness hue and saturations of your photos.

If you want to be really professional then you will need to shoot in a raw format. This basically means that the camera saves lots of information that can help you tweak the exposure in Photoshop. Raw formats are far superior to just a tiff or a JPEG, because when you adjust these you lose quality.

Photoshop has a plug-in designated for adjusting raw files. This is only available in some of the later versions of Photoshop such as CS2 and CS3. Not all Digital cameras are able to shoot in a raw format ?it's only just the proconsumer type that has this facility. I started to notice this feature appearing on cameras from around 2003 onwards, so by now all they should be some bargains to pick up on eBay.

If your camera does not have the ability to shoot in raw format you can still do some work on your photos to enhance them. Making sure that you are using a colour correct display that is calibrated to your printer is really the first step to getting what you want from your photos. Once you have done this you can go into the image menu and select adjustments for lots of options. I normally start off with you and saturation to get the colours just the way that I like them to look. Then you can also adjust the ?levels? which allows the photo to have a good balance of tone.