Editing images

1. Levels

   Levels is usually the very first thing I try, and oftentimes, it's the only thing I use to edit photos. It let's you edit the shadows, midtones, and highlights.

   Bring it up by going to Image >> Adjust >> Levels (or Ctrl + L). The important things to notice are the 3 triangle sliders underneath the histogram.

   

   The middle slider is the midtone slider. Sliding it to the left, lightens the whole image. Sliding it to the right, darkens the whole image.

   

   The left slider is the black point slider. Moving it to the right will make the darks darker, rather than the whole image. The right slider is the white point slider. Moving that to the left will make the lights lighter.

   

   For my image, I'm going to use the midtone slider to lighten the image. Then I'll use the black point slider to darken the darker colors a little more.

   

   My photo now looks like this.

   

2. Color Balance

   We're not done yet though. If you notice, the image is too yellow. To adjust this, we will use Color Balance. You can get to it in Image >> Adjust >> Color Balance (or Ctrl + B). It will come up with all the sliders in the middle at first.

   

   Because the image is too yellow, I'm going to move the slider towards yellow's counterpart, blue. This might make the image too blue, so I'll balance it with more Cyan and Magenta.

   

   Here's our result so far.

   

3. Brightness/Contrast

   To do a final tweak, let's use the Brightness/Contrast. Go to Image >> Adjust >> Brightness/Contrast. The sliders will start in the middle.

   

   Moving the Brightness slider to the right will lighten the image. Moving it to the left will darken it.

   

   Moving the Contrast slider to the right will increase the contrast between the lights and darks. Moving it to the left will lower the contrast, making the colors more dull and gray.

   

   I'm going to lighten the image more and slightly increase the contrast.

   

   And here's the final result!

   

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Image credit: Photo by Cat