Bungalow 104
Levels Adjustment
Original Image
Auto Levels
Photoshop's Levels > Auto doesn't always yield optimum results, as shown above. While acceptable, a lot of warmth has been lost in the second image.
Instead, with Levels set to Auto in an Adjustment Layer, note the resulting minimum and maxium values for each RGB channel (selected from the Channel dropdown list):
ALT-click on Cancel to Reset the Levels. Then enter the lowest and highest values of all the Auto readings into the first and last Input Levels boxes for the composite RGB channel:
Sometimes a gamma adjustment can further improve the image. While I often need to bump it up to 1.2 or 1.4, in this case I felt the image looked best with the gamma dropped to 0.8:
While these images are my own, I wish I could credit the original author for the adjustment technique. Unfortunately I no longer have the source, but the method has served me well.
