All digital photos will need to be adjusted in order for them to print properly. In general they will need to be converted first to “grayscale” and then lightened to compensate for printing on newsprint. To convert to grayscale go to Image/mode/grayscale and answer yes when asked to discard color in Photoshop.
To adjust your photos go to Image/adjustments/levels and you will see the following pop up with a histogram displaying the structure of the photo.
As you can see, the histogram is a graph of the photo. The left side is the shadow, or dark side, and the right is the hi-light, or light side of the photograph. With this photo, most of the histogram is on the left, or dark side.
You will also see three slider adjustments under the graph portion of the histogram. The right hand slider affects the hi-lights of the photo. The left slider affects the shadows of the photo, and the middle slider works with the middle tone.
There are four easy steps to making the adjustments necessary for your photos to print will.
Move the right slider in so it just makes contact with the edge of the graphic histogram on it far right hand side.
Move the left slider to the right so it just makes contact with the left side of the histogram.
Third, move the center slider to the left to lighten the entire tone. If it looks good on your screen, your photo will most likely still be to dark and you need to move the center slider to the left even more.
Fourth, go back to the left slider and move it just a little back to the right to add contrast back into the photograph.
Last step is to sharpen and make sure your photo is linked in your document so when you make your PDF’s you are using your adjusted photo and not the screen resolution from the document.