Master Levels and Curves

Levels and Curves are great editing tools, Neil Freeman shows you how to use them to enhance your images

The Levels & Curves Adjustments menu is hugely versatile and can be used to maximize dynamic range, create localized contrast adjustments, and lift shadows and recover highlights. Within the Levels & Curves Adjustments menu, you have several options.

In the topmost ‘Settings Status’ dropdown: Original Value defaults the levels and curves back to the original image state; Record Adjustments allows you to save a preset of the current levels and curves settings to apply to other images; while Edit Recorded Adjustments lets you alter the presets you’ve created.

Below that, the ‘Channels’ dropdown shows a composite of the colour channels when set to RGB, or you can display and edit the image using the individual Red, Green or Blue channels.

In the row of icons (from the left): Set Black Point selects an eyedropper for you to choose an area you know is black in the image; the Set Neutral Point eyedropper is for choosing an area of midtone grey; and the Set White Point eyedropper is to select an area that is white; Add Anchor Point creates new anchor points on the curves line; Auto Contrast tries to calculate an appropriate contrast curve on your image; Reset Current Channel resets the currently selected channel; and Reset

All Channels resets everything.

Finally, you have the Gamma Correction slider. If the Gamma is incorrect, your image can look very dark or washed out. Using Levels and Curves should correct this, but Gamma allows you to further control the adjustments.