Images for web or print usage frequently require adjustments from an upload, scan, or high-res photography to best prepare the images for display. Despite the improvements in image capture technologies there frequently is a need to adjust images brightness, contrast, color, saturation, sharpness, aspect ratio, and resolution for displaying the best possible image.

Other images are "flat" or "harsh" in appearance. These images can be improved, sometimes dramatically by adjusting contrast. This type of adjustment makes the darker parts of images even darker and lighter parts of images even lighter or just the opposite by muting the darks and lights. The overall effect is to add or reduce "pop" in an image.

Saturation is a measure of the amount of color in an image. The color may be accurate, but the saturation isn't correct - the appearance of the color is too pale or too dark. Some scanners and high-res photographic image capture will interpret certain colors with a certain saturation and other colors with a different saturation. Other times the entire image is either unsaturated or over saturated. Older photos and art tends to have less saturated colors so some software which attempts to automatically correct for saturation ends up over saturating the image. If the image capture isn't done with a sufficient amount of light, the resulting image can have unsaturated colors.

The aspect ratio is the width divided by the height. For example an aspect ratio of 1 to 2 means the height is double the width. Another term someimes used interchangeably with aspect ratio is the proportions of the image. Image capture via scanners or cameras can alter the aspect ratio. For example, if there is extreme reflection on an original that is being photographed, tilting the image can help remove the reflection, but then introduces an error in the aspect ratio. For scanners, once the image is cropped digitally, it is also possible to introduce an error in the aspect ratio. To main the retain the correct proportions of the original, the aspect ratio of te image needs to be adjusted to reflect that of the original.