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Photoshop levels should be part of your work flow process, I use the levels to check all my images, and if need be make the changes needed. With the Photoshop levels you can adjust the Blacks, Mid-tones and Hight-lights, as well as your Black and White Points within that photo. For those that are using Photoshop, all you need to to is hold the (CTRL-L) key to bring up the levels adjustment tool. You should see the following below.



© Image Charles Cassidy

In this Heron shot that Chuck took, the heron was a bit over exposed so all I did was move the center slider to the right to bring out more details in the bird.

As you can see from the image above that we have the levels opened in Photoshop and you can see the histogram in the Input Levels box, so that you are aware your histogram may look very different than this one so don't panic. At the base of the histogram you notice the 3 triangles, well the one on the left controls your BLACKS, the middle one controls you MID-TONES, and the far right controls your HIGH-LIGHTS. Now the boxes below the triangles are the values of the adjustments, but that's about it, I never really use this numbers at all. When you first start up the LEVELS these VALUE numbers are (0, 1.00, 255) 0=BLACK, 1.00=MID-TONES, 255=HIGH-LIGHTS.


How to Adjust Levels

Open up an image and than open the Levels Tool (CTRL-L) and what we are going to do is move down to the triangles, now we are going to make adjustments with the Left and Right ones only, don't worry about the middle one right now there is a reason why I don't touch this until the end. You could just move the left and right triangles to see the results, but there is a little trick I found to make this work perfect everytime.
Lets do the left one, now HOLD the ALT-Key down and now move the slider with your mouse remember to keep that ALT=Key held down and move it to the right until you see about 3 different colors show up on the screen and stop and release the ALT-Key. If you are not happy with the results, hold the ALT-Key down and move the slider a bit back to the left and check your results. Very simple, and once you know what you are looking for on the screen, you will make the adjustment alomost every time. You just adjusted your blacks in the image, now do the same with the right triangle to make adjustments to the high-lights and you are almost there. Remember that I said leave the middle triagle to last, well this does not work with the ALT-Key, you can adjust this one just by moving the slider until you get the mid-tones where you want them.

Just one last step, and your done. See the Output Levels below, when you first open up the Levels Tool there values are 0, 255 0=Black and 255=Whites. I have never had to make adjustments to the BLACKS, but the WHITE point helps toning down the whites in your images and it really can help with getting a bit more details in your images, you need to play around with this slider a bit to understand it.

One last thing, as I mentioned the histogram for each image will be different, and therfore how much you move the triangle slider depends on that histogram, some times just a little, and some times a lot.
Using levels in your work flow is a must really, it will make that photo snap when you are done with the rest of your work flow, give it a try, it is really not hard to do, and once you get the hang of it, I think that you will be glad that you did levels.


I hope that this was of some use


Author Dennis NMSBAGS5Z64R