Adjust Tones and Colors With the Levels Tool
While some of the best photography is captured in natural light, it’s not always a perfect shot from the get-go. When you’re taking a portrait or a landscape photo, you may have to underexpose your photo when shooting to ensure that you don’t lose any data in the overexposed parts of the photo. If you shoot like this, you might be reaching for the Exposure tool to brighten the shot in the editing process. That's where the Levels tool comes in handy.
Contrary to the Exposure tool, which makes for quick adjustments to the basics like overall brightness and contrast, the Levels tool gives you individual control over the highlights, mid-tones, and shadows. Even if the lighting was too dark or your camera settings were a little off while shooting, you can easily manipulate the light in BeFunky’s Photo Editor with the Levels tool. If you haven’t upgraded to a BeFunky Plus account, you can edit with the Levels tool in preview mode.
Anatomy of the Levels Tool
The adjustments within the Levels tool can seem a little overwhelming if you’ve never used it before but we are going to break down each option and tell you what they do so you have a better understanding – after all, knowledge is power. When you are ready to give this a try, navigate to BeFunky’s Photo Editor and upload an image to your canvas. From the Edit tab, scroll to the Brightness category to find the Levels tool. Now, check out what each of these options can do to adjust your photo’s exposure.
Input Levels
There are two Input sliders – Min and Max. The Min Input slider controls shadows. Turning it all the way to the right produces a completely black image.
The Max Input slider, on the other hand, adjusts the highlights. Decreasing the slider will brighten all of the light sources in your photos, and you'll find that moving the slider entirely to the left will turn your image white.
Gamma Slider
The Gamma slider is sandwiched between the two Input sliders and will control the overall exposure of your image. If you don't need a ton of fine-tuning and simply want to brighten or darken the overall image, the Gamma slider is your go-to.
Simply decrease the slider to darken the image, or increase the slider to brighten it. It's pretty failproof for making intuitive edits to exposure, taking all of the highlights and shadows into account.
Output Sliders
Just like the Input sliders, there are two Output sliders in the Levels tool menu: Min Output and Max Output. These sliders will adjust the overall tonal range of your entire image, reducing the contrast of your shadows and highlights.
For example, increasing the Min slider will limit the intensity of the shadows in your photo, making the overall effect look brighter – almost like adding a white overlay.
When you decrease the Max Output slider, it will limit the intensity of the highlights in your image, making the overall effect look darker – almost like adding a black overlay. Moving both sliders slightly inward will allow you to achieve a matte effect if that’s the look you’re going for.
Now that you know your way around the Levels tool menu, it's time to put it into practice! The best thing to keep in mind when editing with the Levels tool is to create harmony and balance between all of the sliders. Check out what this photo looks like after all five of these options have been edited and balanced.
Start Editing Exposure With the Levels Tool
Check out how the Levels tool dramatically fixed the exposure and made all the elements in this image pop. It might be a bit of an adjustment to start using the Levels tool to fix your exposure, but if you’re looking for more control with your editing, this is the way to go! When you're ready to start balancing your exposure with the Levels tool, head to BeFunky's Photo Editor and begin!
