If you're new to image editing, you may want to review our lesson on fixing common problems from our Image Editing tutorial to learn more about the fundamentals of making these changes. If you'd like to follow along, you can download some or all of our example images. Just click any of the images below to open a full-sized version, then right-click the full-sized version and select Save Image As to save it to your computer.
We'll be using adjustment layers throughout this lesson to correct images. As we discussed in the previous lesson , adjustment layers are a type of nondestructive editing because they don't actually change anything about the original image. And because you can continue to tweak adjustment layers as you work, it's easy to try out different effects and get the image to look exactly the way you want. Every image has a mix of shadows , highlights , and midtones. Shadows are the darkest parts of the image, highlights are the brightest parts , and midtones are everything in between.
When you adjust levels, you're adjusting these different tones. And while you could use the brightness and contrast tools for a similar type of adjustment, they're much less powerful than levels. There are many reasons to use a levels adjustment. For instance, if you have a particularly dark—or underexposed —image, you might want to make the midtones and highlights brighter while keeping the shadows relatively dark.
You can see an example of this in the images below. If you've never adjusted levels before, this tool may feel a little unintuitive at first. At this stage, the most important thing is to practice making different adjustments. As you start to gain more experience, you'll be able to use it more effectively. And remember, if an adjustment doesn't look right, you can always undo your changes and start over. Click and drag each of the Input Levels sliders in the Properties panel to see the effect.
Try to find the settings that look best for this image. Review our lesson on reading a histogram to learn more about what it can tell you about an image. If you move the white slider too far to the left, you'll begin to lose detail in your image. This is known as clipping. In the image below, you can see that the clouds have lost a lot of detail, and the color of the sky has also changed. Both of these problems are caused by clipping. If you move the black slider too far to the right, you'll start to see clipping in the image's shadows.
In this example, the bird and branches have lost almost all of their detail. The color of the sky has also changed to a darker blue:. Remember, because you're using adjustment layers none of these changes are permanent until you export your image. So if you see any clipping in your image, don't panic! Simply look at your adjustment layers to find the source of the clipping, then readjust the levels as needed.
Note that the histogram will be unique for every image. If an image has the proper exposure, the histogram will be complete, with no data missing. I use Photoshop CS normally, but picked up a copy of Elements 3. After rebates, it wasn't expensive and I wanted to see just how close to the "real thing" it actually was. The more I played with it, the more convinced I became that many of the features Adobe wanted you to believe they had left out were in fact only buried and inaccessible from the regular user interface.
Authors such as Richard Lynch have seriously explored the possibilities in prior versions of Elements so I decided to see just what I could make Elements 3. One of the fastest ways to add functionality to the full version of Photoshop is through the use of Actions to automate a series of steps.
Unfortunately, Elements does not provide direct support for Actions, but all the great image effects in the Styles and Effects palette bin are actually nothing more than Actions. It turns out that, in at least some cases, if you write an Action in Photoshop CS, you can convince Elements to run it without too much coaxing. If you poke around in how the Styles and Effects bin works, adding your own isn't that difficult.
So, I made a few, starting, naturally enough, with Curves. And I'd like to share them with you here for free. In addition to Curves, I also made actions to run a few other things Adobe left out of Elements including using the Channel Mixer to get excellent black and white conversions of color images, adding a Layer Mask to a layer, and using Selective Color adjustments.
I'll probably have more to say about these other tools in future articles, but I really can't see any reason not to include them here anyway so use them in good health. This has now been tested and works with Elements 1, 2 and 3. Because of changes by Adobe, it does not work with the newer Elements 4 and 5. You can use the Curves effect as you would any other Elements effect.
Select the layer you want to make adjustments to and double-click on the Curves icon in the Styles and Effects bin. A dialog will ask you to assign a name to your new Curves adjustment layer.
As usual, you can assign a blending mode and opacity at this time as well. When you click on "OK" you will get the honest to goodness regular Curves dialog just as you do in the full version of Photoshop, except that the Channel dropdown list will be missing.
Proceed with adjusting the Curves as was described last week. When you then click on "OK" here, the dialog will close and you will be left with a new Curves adjustment layer entry in your Layers palette. These work just like regular adjustment layers in Elements in that you can change the blending mode and opacity, or even delete the effect entirely, at any later point since they are saved with your image as layers. Unlike most adjustment layers though, you can't edit the settings later since Elements is smart enough to know that these aren't supposed to be there.
If you double click on one after closing it you will get a message that it was created in the full version of Photoshop and can not be edited. To change any of the effect's settings, you will need to delete the adjustment layer and recreate it.
Unfortunate, but not a major problem. At least you can now use these effects in Elements in the first place. The Layer Mask effect is linked with the image layer itself and does not have this same restriction.
Note that you can't create a Layer Mask on teh Background layer though. Written by Mike Russell, Curvemeister is an very nice filter plug-in for Photoshop 5 and above that also works with all versions of Elements.
It installs on the Filter menu, and runs just like a regular filter. In addition to the expected Curves features, Curvemeister includes some nice extra touches. Go from Make Curved Lines to the Home page. Go to Curved Lines Part There seem to be a few PS Elements tutorials sites, but yours is by far the clearest and easiest to understand.
A big thank you! I can't wait to use your tutorials especially with my scrapbooking obsession " - Judy in MS. Very very clear and useful tips, tricks and techniques of how-to in PSE9. A great great work! Very clear and helpful. Thanks a bunch. They have been such a BIG help. I bought the Dummies book, and it's OK, but I do better by watching instead of reading.
Kudos to you! I found it through one of your videos on YouTube. Again, thank you so much! First I've got to say thank you for all the information you share. I can't wait to see the "tips and tricks" you are working on because it sounds like those will help things all come together. I've gone thru several of your tutorials and learn so much. I can't praise you enough for your time and patience.
Rick - "Many thanks for your advice, that I will take.
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