Available in both Photoshop CS and Elements, the Photoshop Levels tool allows you improve the tonal range of your images. It may lack some of the more advanced features found in other tonal commands like Curves, but Levels makes up for it with ease of use and functionality.

Not only can you use the Photoshop Levels tool to darken or lighten your images, you can also improve contrast, check for clipped pixels, correct a colour cast and much more besides. Read on for our six top Levels tricks.

6 Photoshop Levels tool tricks you really should know

01 Master the basics
Levels works by allowing you to specify a point for the whites, blacks and midtones. These are set with three controls that sit along the bottom of the histogram: the black point, white point and midtone sliders. It’s best to set the white and black points first, then use the midtone slider to tweak the brightness of the midtones.

02 Use Adjustment Layers
In most cases you’re better off adding Levels tweaks as Adjustment Layers. To do it, click the Create Adjustment Layer icon in the Layers Panel and choose from the list. Adjustment Layers work by affecting all the layers below them in the Layers Stack. You can add a Layer Mask, change the Blend Mode, or alter the Opacity at any time.

03 Read the histogram
The histogram in the Levels dialog box displays the tones in your image in graphical form, with the darkest on the left and the lightest on the right. An image will display full richness of tone if the graph reaches the bottom left and right corners. If the peaks reach the bottom before either end, drag the sliders to meet the edges of the graph.

04 Check Clipped Pixels
If you hold Alt while dragging either the white or black point slider, the image will change to a view that shows any clipped pixels. If there are no clipped pixels, the display will be completely black (for the white point slider) or white (for the black point slider). As you drag the slider inwards, you’ll begin to see clipped pixels appear.

05 Correct Colour Casts
If your image displays an unwanted colour cast, Levels can provide an instant fix. Click the middle of the three eyedroppers, then look for a point in your image that should be neutral grey, such as a road or stone. Click over the point with the grey eyedropper. All the other colours in will then be remapped around this neutral grey point.

06 Apply Levels selectively
If you apply Levels as an Adjustment Layer, you can use a mask to restrict the effect to certain areas of the image. Adjustment Layers come accompanied by a Layer Mask, so to hide parts of the tweak, grab the Brush tool and paint over them with black, or hit Cmd/Ctrl+I to invert the Layer Mask to black, then paint with white to reveal the tweak.

PAGE 1: 6 Photoshop Levels tool tricks you should really know
PAGE 2: 3 creative Photoshop Levels effects

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Our start image for this Photoshop tutorial.

When it comes to taking photos (or trying to top up your tan) the weather inevitably will let you down, even when you’re shooting in an exotic holiday destination. This can be especially annoying if you’re trying to capture white sands, bright blue seas and clear blue skies.

But thanks to one of our favourite Photoshop tricks, we can select our start image’s drab overcast sky and use the Photoshop selection tools to replace it with a more brochure-like graduated blue. On its own, the Photoshop Magic Wand tool can select most of the picture’s original sky, even if it contains a mixture of greyscale clouds and patches of blue.

However, the Magic Wand won’t be up to the challenge of including delicate details, like our straw parasol’s fine, pointy leaves. Fortunately the Magic Wand belongs to a team of selection tools that have the combined ability to tackle just about any selection challenge.

Below we’ll show you how to use the Selection Brush to add or subtract from the Magic Wand’s initial selection to include the parasol, beach and sea, then turn the selection into a Layer Mask, and then coax back missing details, like delicate palm tree fronds.

We’ll also show you how to use the Gradient tool to create a clear blue sky from scratch, and even add a couple of clouds to add points of interest and a sense of depth to the scene.

All you’ll need for this Photoshop tutorial is Photoshop Elements 9 or higher and about 20 minutes to spare!

Step 1: Start selecting
Open your original image. In the Layers palette, double-click on the ‘Background’ thumbnail to unlock it; it will be renamed ‘Layer 0′. Grab the Magic Wand tool from the Tools palette and, in the Options bar, set the Tolerance to 41 and tick Contiguous. Click on the sky. The ‘marching ants’ selection marquee will appear. Hold Shift and keep clicking to add more sky.

Step 2: Modify your selection
To remove bits of the parasol’s top edge, grab the Selection Brush from the Tools palette and tick the Subtract From Selection icon in the Options bar. Choose a round brush in the Brush preset picker with a Size of 45 and Hardness of 85%. Spray on the edge of the parasol to remove it; if you keep Shift pressed as you click, you can spray a straight line between two points and modify the selection more quickly.

Step 3: Make a mask
Go to Select>RefineEdge. Pop Smooth to 22 to remove jagged selection edges. Set Feather to 1.0 and click OK. Choose Select>Inverse from the main drop-down menu. Click the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette (see page 43 if using Elements 8 or earlier). The selection turns into a black and white mask that turns the sky 100% transparent while keeping the parasol, sea and beach 100% solid.

Step 4: Sample sky colour
Click the ‘Layer 0′ thumbnail to target it. Grab the Eyedropper tool and click on a remaining patch of blue sky hiding between the lower leaves of the parasol. The foreground colour will turn light blue. Click on the background colour swatch. In the Colour Picker, set R to 35, G to 65 and B to 110. Click OK. You’ll now have a light-blue foreground and a darker-blue background.

Step 5: Draw a sky
Click the Create New Layer icon. Drag ‘Layer 1′ below ‘Layer 0′. Grab the Gradient tool, select the Gradient Editor, then Foreground to Background, then the Linear Gradient icon. On ‘Layer 1′, draw a gradient upwards from the horizon to create a graduated sky. Any patches of original sky clinging to the parasol’s fronds become the same colour as the gradient.

Step 6: Reveal delicate details
Grab the Brush tool. Choose a soft-edged brush with a Size of 200. Set Opacity to 20%. Click on the Layer Mask. Set the foreground colour to white. Spray over the leaves at the bottom of the parasol to reveal more delicate details. Copy-and-paste your new cloud.

Use a Lighten Blending Mode to add it to the scene. Duplicate the layer and use Image>Rotate>FlipLayerHorizontal to create another cloud.

Our finished image.

Top Photoshop tip
When removing bits of the parasol’s top edge from the Magic Wand’s initial selection in Step 2, you may end up removing parts of the sky from the selection too. To add bits of sky to the selection, click on the Add To Selection icon in the Options bar. You can use the Options bar’s Add To and Subtract From modes to fine-tune the selection marquee until only the sky is selected. By pressing the Alt key you can toggle between the Add To and Subtract From modes with ease!

Digital Camera’s 10-part series ‘Teach Yourself Photoshop’ builds into a complete video reference library. These easy-to-follow video guides will take you on a start-to-finish journey through perfecting your photos in the digital darkroom. In this video, which is aimed at CS5 users, you’ll discover how to use the Adjustment Brush to fix common problems with your photos, including missing detail, exposure errors and clipped highlights. Click the links to the right and build up the complete collection with each new issue of Digital Camera.

Digital Camera’s 10-part series ‘Teach Yourself Photoshop’ builds into a complete video reference library. These easy-to-follow video guides will take you on a start-to-finish journey through perfecting your photos in the digital darkroom. In this video you’ll find out how to remove a distracing background from a photo while making sure to keep all the important foreground detail. Get to grips with selection tools, Clone Stamp tool and more. Click the links to the right and build up the complete collection with each new issue of Digital Camera.

Digital Camera’s 10-part series ‘Teach Yourself Photoshop’ builds into a complete video reference library. These easy-to-follow video guides will take you on a start-to-finish journey through perfecting your photos in the digital darkroom. In this video you’ll discover how to retouch portraits using basic tools in the Adobe CameraRaw editor and Photoshop Elements including the Spot Healing tool, Healing Brush, Clone Stamp tool and more. Click the links to the right and build up the complete collection with each new issue of Digital Camera.

Digital Camera’s 10-part series ‘Teach Yourself Photoshop’ builds into a complete video reference library. These easy-to-follow video guides will take you on a start-to-finish journey through perfecting your photos in the digital darkroom. In this video you’ll find out how to use some of the more advanced selection tools available in Photoshop CS5 including Colour Range, Magic Wand tool, Refine edge, Brush tool, Filters, Dodge tool and more. Click the links to the right and build up the complete collection with each new issue of Digital Camera.

Digital Camera’s 10-part series ‘Teach Yourself Photoshop’ builds into a complete video reference library. These easy-to-follow video guides will take you on a start-to-finish journey through perfecting your photos in the digital darkroom. In this video you’ll find out useful tips for selecting multiple areas of a photo to edit, including how to save a selection, how to use layer masks and more. Click the links to the right and build up the complete collection with each new issue of Digital Camera.

Digital Camera’s 10-part series ‘Teach Yourself Photoshop’ builds into a complete video reference library. These easy-to-follow video guides will take you on a start-to-finish journey through perfecting your photos in the digital darkroom. In this video you’ll find out how to swap colours using the selection tools to replace one colour with another, using selection tools such as the Polygonal lasso. Click the links to the right and build up the complete collection with each new issue of Digital Camera.

Digital Camera’s 10-part series ‘Teach Yourself Photoshop’ builds into a complete video reference library. These easy-to-follow video guides will take you on a start-to-finish journey through perfecting your photos in the digital darkroom.
In this video you’ll find an introduction to the different selection tools in Photoshop Elements, allowing you to remove backgrounds from your photos. Find out which tools are the most appropriate for your project, including the selection marquee tool, lasso tool, magic wand, quick selection tool. Click the links to the right and build up the complete collection with each new issue of Digital Camera.

If you’ve got some dusty old black-and-white prints in your attic, or even a mono digital file that you want to breathe new life into, this is the technique for you.

In this Photoshop Elements tutorial you’ll learn how to add colour to a black and white photo in the style of a hand-tinted photograph. Hand-tinting was a traditional technique used before the advent of colour photography. It was hugely popular with adventurous travelling photographers in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

It was also a rather laborious process that took skilled workers hours of painstaking toil to get right. Today, however, Photoshop Elements makes this technique easy, using some simple techniques and tools, including brushes, Blending Modes and layers, as we’ll show you here.

Inspired by the memorable travel shots of the great travel photographer Burton Holmes, we dug out some black and white shots taken in India. After scanning the negatives, we set about giving the striking portrait shown above the hand-tinted treatment. Read on to find out how to add colour to a black and white photo…

1. Turn it sepia

Download the add-colour-to-black-and-white.jpg and open in Photoshop Elements. First, we’ll give the image a slight sepia tone. To do this, go to Enhance > ColourVariations. In the new window that appears, move the Adjust Colour Intensity slider to the left (about a quarter of the way) and click the Add Red and Decrease Blue boxes.

2. Change the Blending Mode

To add the first of your colours to the image, go to Layer>New> Layer. Change the Blending Mode to Colour using the drop-down menu at the top of the Layers palette. This change is very important, because it reveals the tones and shapes from the original layer in a way that’s similar to hand-tinting inks.

3. Pick a brush

Next, select the Brush tool from the Tools palette and choose an appropriate sized brush for the area you want to colour. In this case, we’re going to work on the large area of sky first, so choose a wide, soft-edged brush so you can colour the area quickly. Use the Colour Picker to set the foreground colour to a deep blue.

4. Start painting

Paint in the area of sky – you can use the square bracket keys on your keyboard to make the brush smaller or bigger depending on the intricacy of the area you are painting (around the tree edges, for example). Don’t worry about being too accurate – we’re replicating a hand-tinted look, so it’s OK if the edges are a bit rough.

5. Reduce the opacity

Once you have applied the colour wash it can often still look a little too modern and garish. To calm the colour down a little, use the Opacity slider at the top of the Layers palette to reduce the opacity of the layer. Sometimes it’s good to reduce it to as little as 10%. However, in most cases about 25% to 35% is perfect.

6. And repeat…

Repeat steps 2 to 5 with different colours for the other areas of the scene. It’s good practice to keep and work on different colours and areas of the scene on separate layers, because the opacity required might be slightly different for each colour. Consequently, you can end up with lots of layers – at least 30 for a fully coloured scene.