Levels adjustments are one of the most basic yet most important things you can do when enhancing photos. The levels tool will usually display a histogram which shows you whether the tones in your image cover the full range from solid black, on the left of the scale, to solid white on the right.
If they don’t, you can then move black point and white point sliders to line up with where the histogram does actually start and end to maximise the tonal range of your picture.
It’s a quick and simply way to maximise contrast and tonal without clipping (cutting off) any details in the extreme shadows and highlights. You don’t have to do it with every single image – some look best with low contrast – but it’s one of the handful of core adjustments you’ll find yourself doing again and again.
With careful use of levels and curves adjustments you can rescue even the faintest and most faded artworks and restore both saturation and contrast. Levels and curves are two of the most basic adjustment tools in any image-editing program, but … Continue reading Restore faded art using levels and curves
Levels are one of the most basic image adjustments in any image-editor. They’re your first chance to act on the information you get from the image histogram and use adjustments to maximise the tonal range of your picture. In fact, … Continue reading Mastering Elements Levels adjustments
There’s this idea in digital photography that your histogram must never be clipped, and that it should always fit – just – within the maximum width of the scale. And sometimes we work so hard to recover shadow and highlight … Continue reading How to preview and control histogram clipping in Lightroom
