LEVELS
PHOTOSHOP - Levels, Curves, Highlights & Shadows
Here are three ways to ‘open up’ your images, that is, bring out the drama, increase contrast or make your image pop.
1. LEVELS
This command is when you want add an overall adjustment to your contrast. Bear in mind that it is destructive, meaning it blows out your whites and darkens your shadows, but if this is what you want, then it is a great and simple solution.
Here we have a green leaf with rain drops that is crying out for some drama, and changing the contrast is an obvious option. So open the image (3) up in Photoshop and go; ‘Image - Adjustments - Levels’ then apply the settings (2) and this is the result. You can save or add more effects if you wish.
2. CURVES
This command is similar to Levels but you can adjust the extremes of your Shadows and Highlights and avoid losing them. It’s a little more delicate to use but it’s good when you need it. You can see that the Highlights are not as dramatic as in Levels. Use the same image (3) again for this exercise if you like.
3. HIGHLIGHT & SHADOWS
The third method is a little more involved that the other two so offers even more control of both extremes within an image. Apart from tonality changes, you can remove Chromatic Aberration, defringe as well as specific changes to colour. Again, using the same image as above (3) we can have a go at doing this. We can open the file in Adobe Bridge as a RAW file even if it is a .jpg image.
So: File - Open in Camera Raw’
They all work but offer slightly different results. It’s up to you really. For an image like this that does not really need the shadows opening up any more.
As a preference I would probably go with 2 and 5.
All photography and information © Jon Davison 2022.