Tip of the Week - Fine Tune Your Black & White Photos Using LEVELS!
Once you have your photo open in Photoshop Elements, go up to the MENU BAR and go into ENHANCE > CONVERT TO BLACK AND WHITE. The results are OK, but now you want to add a little POP to the picture. Now go back into the ENHANCE > ADJUST LIGHTING > LEVELS.
In Photoshop CS3 convert your photo to black and white (as seen in our earlier Tip of the Week). Now go to IMAGE>ADJUSTMENTS>LEVELS.
For both software versions you will get a dialog box that shows a histogram (similar to below) of the different “LEVELS” of grey in your photo.
Fine Tune With Levels
- The height of the ‘mountain’ in the histogram shows you what the shade prominence is in your photo.
- The Red line I have added shows the relation of the ‘mountain’ to the color in your photo.
- This bar shows all of the variations of grey within the photo.
Just from looking at the histogram, we can see that the photo I am working on has NO BLACK and NO WHITE, but we are going to fix that!
From this point we click and drag the little triangle sliders to adjust the blacks and whites for better contrast! Just move the Black slider toward the edge of the ‘mountain’ until you like it, then do the same with the White slider.
To view and compare the before and after just check and uncheck the PREVIEW checkbox.
