Levels is really very simple method of making your photographs look better and it's not at all a difficult task as it look like... When I started editing my photographs, I was huge fan of Adobe Camera Raw and always ran away from these setting like Level Adjustments or other adjustment layers available in Adobe Photoshop Elements... But all of them are awesome !!! Today we are going to discuss Level Adjustments in Adobe Photoshop Elements.. Editor as well as Organizer.... Levels mainly represent the adjustment of level of light and dark areas of a particular image image... Initially I used to think that understanding these graph and editing according to them would be a difficult thing for me but its pretty easy and one feel very confident after knowing small facts about it.... There are multiple ways to do this in most photo editing softwares but here we are going to discuss Auto-Levels in Organizer and custom adjustments in Editor part of Adobe Photoshop Elements... Have a look at the photograph shared below and read below it about more details...
First photograph on right is original and one on left side is result of level adjustment only... No other setting... Going forward we will saw what all level adjustments have been applied to this photographs and all How's, Why's etc...
Above Photograph shows Auto-Level Results in Organizer.. The Photograph on left is after effect of Auto-Level on photograph in right !!!
To start with I always recommend to use Auto-Level setting in Organizer and apply it on any of your dull photograph.. and you will see the magic with single click on 'Auto Level' button in Fix Panel of Organizer... Here are the steps to do Auto-Level in Organizer...
1. Launch PSE Welcome screen
2. Click on Organize Button to launch Organizer
3. Select the photograph with need Level adjustment
4. Click on Fix Panel on right
5. Click 'Auto Level' button
Lets see how to do custom setting in Levels of a photograph in Adobe PhotoShop Elements... There are two entry points to enter into Level Adjustment workflow....
1. Layer Menu - New Adjustment Layer - Levels...
2. In Layer palette click on Adjustment layers and select Levels
Here is the dialog we see on launching Level Adjustment settings from Layer Menu or Adjustment Layers...
In above dialog, input levels is the main tool for adjusting the photographs.... The black arrow on the left represents shadows... the grey one represents midtones and the white arrow represents highlights in the photograph... The curve basically shows us the density of the data in various ranges... These mountains and valleys show the ranges of a photograph in terms of brightness... A good rule of thumb is to bring the black and white sliders towards the middle so that they are just underneath the edge of the "mountain" nearest to them. The midrange grey arrow can then be adjusted for fine-tuning the image....
Output levels allow us to change the photograph's tonal range... Instead of pure black to pure white we can adjust the maximum whiteness or maximum blackness to a shade of grey if desired...
The eyedroppers are quick step to editing levels.... Click the black eyedropper and then click on the part of your pic that should be black to have the program adjust levels and color hue accordingly... Follow the same process for the grey and white eyedroppers if needed.
As long as the preview button is checked you will be able to see the results of your changes in real time. Once your image looks like you want it to just click the OK button and you are finished adjusting levels...
Now lets play with these and see how the photograph changes...
Moving White pointer means adjusting brighter pixels ... See this photographs looks more bright...
Grey pointer works on midtones.. It we move it towards left, brightness of midtones increases.. and it its moved towards right, it tend to look dark..
Blacks are changing o more black and tolerance increases as we move towards right... The leftmost pointer is for handling darker tones...
Here is what could find a best lighting.. Although there are some concepts to get best results but I prefer to have visual impact rather than graphically correct photography..
Happy editing !!!
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