First and foremost there are some assumptions to be made before this article gets underway. Many of us use Photoshop and other image editing software, well, if you are not, no problems. But you have to decide how much of post-photo processing you are ready to do. If you are ready to work a lot on your pictures (if you have a large collection you can be well spending several days depending on how much attention you put to the details), then you might find the settings below useful.

*Contrast : Negative (or Minimum)
*Brightness : Zero (or Neutral)
*Saturation : Zero (or Neutral)
*ISO : 80-200 (Sunny Day), 200-400 (Cloudy Day), Indoors (400-800), Moving Objects (1600, with exposure as low as possible)

So you have tried taking a few photographs with the above settings and is extremely disappointed with the results? Now choose a photo and use Photoshop to adjust the brightness and contrast. Use sharpen or smart sharpen whichever you like more. Adjust the saturation up to a point where you feel its ok. Take care of the noise. And see the result.

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As many people tend not to get to do so much of processing task behind every photo, it’s sometimes better to keep a few settings handy. I have 5 levels for each of my settings of contrast, sharpness and saturation (-2, –1, 0, +1, +2). The settings I like to use most is Contrast +1, Sharpness +2, Saturation +2 and ISO 400. You can easily play around with these and find your own unique combination which you like most.

Have some photos or settings to talk about? Feel free to share with me.