There is much in regards to digital imaging and photography that isn't intuitive. Editing your images is one such example. The biggest thing that students have trouble with is failing to make full use the full tonal range of the image.
One of the biggest struggles that students have is learning to adjust the distribution of tones in an image. Technically speaking, when you are shooting, your job is to capture all the data in the scene without clipping important highlight information. Your job in editing is to re-arrange those tones to make full use of the tonal range and create an attractive image.
If you see data climbing the right and left walls of an image, that is data containing no detail. I find if helpful if you think of lost detail as not having texture. If you grossly overexpose an area to the point that the data is climbing the right wall, let's say it is a white t-shirt, then the photo of the t-shirt won't have any sense of texture to it. You won't be able to tell if there was a pattern or what type of fabric it was. In a nut shell, you should set the black and white point of an image so that the data just kisses both sides of the histogram without climbing it. Of course, there are exceptions to this such as when you deliberately allow the white of a specular highlight to go to pure white.
If you see that there is a gap between the right wall and the image data, then you are not using the full range of tones available to you. Increase the exposure additionally until the data just kisses or nearly kisses the wall. If you see that there is a gap between the left wall and the image data, then you are not using the full range of tones available to you. Increase the Blacks slider until the data just kisses or nearly kisses the wall.You should do these edits first, then edit the other tones. At a minimum will likely have to adjust the midtones a bit using the Lightness slider or Curves.
Simply put, if you only use part of the tonal range, then you will have a flat (lacking contrast) image.
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