Ok.. We will just jump right in then...
Contrast, Color & Tonal Adjustments with the Levels DialogueToday’s lesson will complete our focus on the levels dialogue. Levels is your most powerful tool for correcting exposure and removing color casts. It should be done first, right after cropping your photo. Levels works by adjusting all the pixels in your image file around the data you input. You tell Elements what is supposed to be black, grey, and white and Elements can determine all other colors more accurately. Levels does have an auto feature but I do not recommend it.
If you would like to compare results, open an image file, duplicate your layer and apply auto levels. Now duplicate your original background layer again and adjust levels yourself using the steps outlined in Part I of today's lesson. See the difference?
A Levels adjustment gives you accurate color. In landscape photos, this is often all that is needed although you may want to warm up (increase yellow) or cool down (increase blue) the overall color tone of a photo.
In Part II we will look at skintones. You do not want ‘accurate’ color for skintones. You want flattering color. This will require few minor adjustments once accurate color is achieved. Typically you will warm up skintones by boosting yellow a touch and you may find that desaturating red is needed.
There will also be times when you only want to correct color in a specific are. That can be done with the masking layer provided with adjustment layers or with any of the selection tools which we will work with next week.
We will use the method outlined in the Color Correction Chapter of your book (The Photoshop Elements # Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby) entitled ‘Color Correcting Digital Camera Images’ and the trick for finding a Neutral Grey.
If you do not have the book refer to
http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/elements/tone-color/Including setting your grey values
http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/neutral-gray.phpAfter you adjust your black, grey, and white droppers it's time to turn our attention to those sliders. The General rule is to move the shadow slider on your left til it touches the edge of your histogram and then do the same to your highlight slider on the right. In our last 2 photos we will look at times when you do not want to follow that rule.
The middle slider will adjust your midtones. A move to the right will darken midtones and increase contrast and of course moving to the left will do the opposite.
Do this first!!Set Up The Levels Defaults: With our image open in Photoshop Elements, let's first take a moment to set up our Levels command properly. Click on the half white half black circle to add an adjustment layer. Choose levels. In the bottom right corner of your levels dialogue, you'll see three eyedropper icons. Double-click on the one on the left, which is the white point eyedropper: This brings up the Color Picker. If you look on the right side of the Color Picker, down near the bottom, you'll see the letters R, G and B, which stand for "Red", "Green", and "Blue", along with an input box to the right of each one. Type the value 245 into each of the three input boxes. Continue the same process for your grey and black eyedropper. Input 10 into each box for black; 128 for your midtone preference.
Now click OK to exit out of the Levels dialog box. Photoshop Elements will ask you if you want to save the changes you just made as the new defaults. Click Yes, and you won't have to make these changes the next time you edit an image because they've been saved as the default values.This week we will also introduce High Pass Sharpening:
The reason the High Pass filter technique works so well at sharpening images is because any areas in the image which are not an edge are left untouched. The only areas that have sharpening applied to them are the edges, which is exactly what you want, and also what all of those confusing options in the "Unsharp Mask" and "Smart Sharpen" filters are trying to help you achieve.
With the High Pass filter, you can often get better results than either of the sharpening filters can give you without fumbling around with confusing options.
What I particularly like about this method of sharpening is that it can be undone even after the file has been saved. This is because the sharpening is done on a separate layer not on the original background layer. You can also click the eye beside this layer on and off to see the effect at any time. It’s also easy to adjust the amount of sharpening by adjusting the opacity of the level.
Part I : —Open image 5767
Add a Levels Adjustment layer. Use the 3 eyedroppers to correct color casts.
Adjust levels sliders for correct exposure and midtone contrast as needed.
Flatten image. Duplicate image. Go to Filter > Other > High Pass. Choose radius of 1.2 pixels. Hit OK. Change blend mode to Overlay for sharpening. Adjust opacity of layer as needed.
Turn the visibility on and off of each layer one at a time and evaluate each layer separately. Do you need to make any further adjustments?
Flatten image. Save as a .tiff file.
_________________________________________________________________
—Open image 5777
Add a Levels Adjustment layer. Use the 3 eyedroppers to correct color casts.
Adjust levels sliders for correct exposure and midtone contrast as needed..
Flatten image. Duplicate image. Go to Filter > Other > High Pass. Choose radius of 1.2 pixels. Hit OK. Change blend mode to Overlay for sharpening. Adjust opacity of layer as needed.
Turn the visibility on and off of each layer one at a time and evaluate each layer separately. Do you need to make any further adjustments?
Flatten image. Save as a .tiff file.
_________________________________________________________________
Color Correction Part II : Skintones— image 0466 & image 2982
Add a Levels Adjustment layer. Adjust levels as described in Part 1. (see note on Level sliders at end)
Duplicate your background level. Go to Enhance > Adjust Color > Adjust Color for Skintone. Click on an area of skintone. (you may need to try a few areas) Hit OK when happy.
Flatten image. Duplicate image. Go to Filter > Other > High Pass. Choose radius of 1.2 pixels. Hit OK. Change blend mode to Overlay for sharpening. Adjust opacity of sharpening layer as needed.
Turn the visibility on and off of each layer one at a time and evaluate each layer separately. Do you need to make any further adjustments?
Demonstration: Duplicate your original background layer. Apply Auto levels. Apply Adjust color for skintone. See the difference?
image 0466
- leveld2.jpg (55.79 KiB) Viewed 2468 times
This is a screenshot of the histogram settings I used on this image. This image was dangerously close to blown hightlights. Moving the highlight slider toward the histogram would increase these highlights. I slid the shadow slider past the edge of the histogram. This increased the amount of pixels considered 'black' and therefore increased the shadow areas and contrast of the image. Generally it is reccomended to do this with the midtones. The face in this image fell within the midtone area though and it was more flattering to only slightly adjust the midtone contrast. Opting for increased shadows allowed for an increase in contrast of the overall image while keeping the skintone soft and flattering.
image 2982
- leveldialogue.jpg (55.77 KiB) Viewed 2465 times
This level adjustment was quite different. The shadows slider was pulled right to edge of the histogram. The highlights slider was pull closer to the histogram in order to correct some underexposure. Pulling it to the histogram would create a very harsh exposure but now the image is still too dark. Adjusting the midtones toward the left brightened the image while reducing contrast in the midtone area. This is often more flattering.
Faces often fall into the midtone area. It is very important to consider your midtone adjustments carefully.