Adjusting the levels

Ironlung · Admin Joined: 24 May 2008 Posts: 118

Adjusting levels is a 3-step process:

1.Adjust for the shadows;
2.Adjust for the highlights; and,
3.Adjust for the midtones.

If, in the past, you have just thrown up your hands in the air and bemoaned how bad your digital camera was, perhaps you were a bit too hasty.Try This process on any of your underexposed shot,and if at first you dont succeed...blah blah,you know the rest.Here we are going to look at an underexposed image and restore it useing levels

[If you want to follow along with this tutorial,right click and save the above picture now and open it in Photoshop Elements or cs2 or 3]

In Photoshop Elements, select Enhance - Brightness/Contrast - Levels... A histogram pops up on your screen and looks like this:

Don't panic! The histogram is simply a representation of all the pixels in the picture. A quick glance at it tells us that most of our pixels are toward the shadows (to the left). Along the horizontal axis, there are 3 triangular markers (really, sliders): use the black one at the left to indicate where the darkest group of pixels start in your picture; use the white one at the right to indicate where the brightest group of pixels start in your picture; and use the shaded one in the middle to indicate the midtones. It's that simple!

Let's apply our 3 steps:

1. Adjust for the shadows. We want to move the black marker to the first group of dark pixels. In this case, since the black marker is already pointing to the first group of dark pixels, we will leave it where it is, i.e. at the 0 mark.

2. Adjust for the highlights. We want to move the white marker to the first group of bright pixels. In this case, we move the white marker to the left to a point where we feel the first bright group of pixels start, around the 172 mark:

By doing this, notice how the picture has changed already for the better, with "true" highlights:

3. Adjust for the midtones. Click on the shaded marker and drag it to the left or right until you are satisfied with the result, in our case to somewhere around 1.98 (adjust to your own personal preference):

Click OK and save your "restored" picture. Nothing wrong with this picture now --

There, that was easy, eh? Get into the habit of bringing your picture into levels and adjusting it for shadows, highlights, and midtones before you apply sharpening to it (another easy process):

We hope you have enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any questions, spot any errors, or have an article idea, please give us your feedback on this article.