Johnny_Yuma: Photoshop tutorial 10

Add Pop to your Photos with Levels

STEP 1: Open your image

Ctrl-O (File --> Open) to open your image.

As you can see this is a pretty dull, lifeless picture. Pretty typical of Point & Shoot cameras.

STEP 2: Duplicate your background

Duplicate your background by dragging the ‘Background’ layer (in the layers palette) to the ‘Create new layer’ icon at the bottom of the ‘layers palette’.

STEP 3: Color cast

With the ‘Histogram’ palette open (Window --> Histogram), click on the options drop down menu (the triangle and 3 bars icon) and select ‘All Channels View’.

This will show us a histogram for each RGB channel.

As you look at each channel you will notice that they don’t line up. The main ‘hump’ in the Red channel is a bit to the left, and the Blue channel a bit to the right. This indicates a color cast. You can also see that there is a lot more Red in the shadows as well. Further study of our histogram shows that each channel is offset to the right.

Go ahead and click on ‘Expanded view’ in the ‘histogram’ options palette to close the rgb’s.

STEP 4: Levels

Now that we know what the problem is, let’s get started.

With the ‘Background copy’ layer active in your ‘layers’ palette, click on the ‘Create new fill or adjustment layer’ icon at the bottom of the ‘layers’ palette and select ‘Levels’.

This will open up our ‘Levels’ dialog box.

The only thing we need to worry about in the dialog box is the ’Channel’ and the Black and White arrows (more like triangles) inside the ‘Input Levels’ section.

Select ‘Red’ from the ‘Channel’ drop down menu (Ctrl-1). Hold down the ‘Alt” key and drag the black slider to the right. You image should now turn red. As you drag the slider to the right some black will show up on the image. This is when you want to stop (about 54). The black that you see will have an ‘R’ value of zero in the final image, so you don’t want to push it too far.