News photographers, often operating under great pressure and adverse conditions, are not always able to make the precise camera adjustments that create the perfect picture. When that happens to TIME's photographers, they can turn to a resourceful ally: the Time-Life Photo Lab. It is the job of the lab to take a photo that might have been shot in haste or in poor light and skillfully upgrade its quality for use in the magazine. Some shots need more help than others. Recently, the only available film of a U.S. Navy pilot parachuting from his Syrian-downed plane over Lebanon arrived in New York badly underexposed, blurred and nearly monochromatic. By "pushing" the film to increase the exposure, then applying various combinations of colored filters, the lab technicians enhanced the photo's murky hues so that it could be used on a two-page color spread. Such seemingly remarkable achievements are taken in stride. Says Deputy Lab Chief Peter Christopoulos: "It is only an extreme example of what we do to nearly every picture to make it clear and accurate."

For Chief Herbert Orth and the Photo Lab's 50 employees, bridging the gap between unprocessed shot and usable picture means handling almost 70,000 rolls of color and more than 30,000 rolls of black-and-white film per year for TIME and the other Time Inc. magazines. It can sometimes mean transferring people and equipment to distant places, or, in this year of Olympics, political conventions and elections, of leasing local facilities and supervising the rapid processing of thousands of feet of film. It also means working with suppliers and manufacturers to adapt or even invent processes or equipment. One new machine currently being tested uses a computerized "analyzer" to take most of the guesswork out of printing color negatives, which cannot be read by eye. To shoot space shuttle launches at Cape Canaveral, for which equipment has to be set up days in advance, and left in place, the lab's specialists adapted delicate seismographic probes used for oil exploration; activated by timers just before liftoff, the probes' circuits sense the rocket's vibrations and trigger the motor-driven cameras. "We do everything that a commercial lab does," notes Orth. "We have to be able to do anything and everything the company needs." Indeed, says TIME Picture Editor Arnold Drapkin, "the Photo Lab really comes through for us. During the U.S. invasion of Grenada last October, we received scores of rolls of film for prints and transparencies, from professionals and amateurs, and most of it late in the week. Five people worked for three days to process it and meet our deadlines."