Levels tool

Levels Tool

The Levels tool offers advanced functionality and control of the Photo Enhance Tool, displaying a rawer view of the controls of the levels balance of an image.

The Levels tool is accessible from the Photo tools fly-out menu, it is the sixth icon from the left. To use the tool, the image you want to control the brightness of needs to be selected first. Select the image, then select the tool.

Much like the Photo Enhance tool, Clip tool and many of the other tools the changes are non-destructive and can easily be changed or removed if required.

All changes made using the Levels tool, will display the changes in the histogram by overlaying a lighter red histogram graph over the original.

There are a number of ways to use the Levels tool to enhance the brightness of an image using the Levels tool;

The Histogram

The histogram is a graphical representation of the brightness of an image.

Just below the histogram are 3 cursors, black, grey and white. These control the histogram and the brightness levels it displays. Any of these can be moved sideways, but will always remain in the same order. To do this simply drag them from side to side to make real-time adjustments to the brightness of your image.

The Eye Dropper
Below the histogram are 3 eye dropper icons, black, grey and white. These are interactive tools that can be dragged onto the image to pick out black, grey or white points of the image.

This will automatically optimize the brightness levels accordingly based on the eye dropper color selected and area of the image that you dropped it on.

Auto Enhance

The Levels tool includes an auto-enhance button which performs a similar function to the Photo Enhance tools Enhance button. You will see the changes reflected in the histogram.

Some examples of the features in the Levels tool are shown below.

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