Adjust My Image Using Levels?

Go under the Image menu, under Adjustments, and choose Levels (or use the keyboard shortcut Command-L [PC: Ctrl-L]). The first thing we normally do in the Levels dialog is expand the tonal range of the image by making the brightest parts of the image as bright as possible without clipping the highlights, and then do the same thing to the shadows. Here’s how: Press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key, and then click-and-hold on the highlights slider (the white slider beneath the histogram). This turns the image black. Start dragging the slider to the left until you see white areas start to appear (as seen in the inset above). Those white areas are a warning, letting you know that those parts of the image have become so bright that they’re clipping, so back off a little until they go away. Now do the same thing with the shadows slider (the dark gray slider beneath the histogram), but instead of turning black, the image turns white. Drag to the right, and as you do, the first things that appear in black are the shadows clipping, so back off a little. Lastly, you can control the overall brightness using the center midtones slider (the light gray one beneath the histogram). Now that I’ve said that, I want you to know that I rarely use Levels in my own workflow. It’s kind of an “old school” way to adjust your images (same thing for Curves on the next page). The workflow today is to use Camera Raw, either before you open the image, or as a filter after it’s already open in Photoshop (see Chapter 3 for more).