adjust level to make darks darker and lights lighter

I have increased the brightness of darks. Watch the video at the top to easily see how it works. If the dots are close together the region is narrow, if its far apart a greater rang of tones are affected. If you move the dots, you target a different set of tones. To the left to darken and to the right to brighten. The 4 sliders adjust the brightness of each of the 4 regions. The dots divide the bar into 4 sections and work like a form of luminosity masking. You will see a black to white bar under the curve with 3 dots on it. They are soo good! How Parametric Curves Work OK, get ready for a really quick crash course on parametric curves. Also you can’t target the exact tones you want to include as shadows from the shadow slider. The reason I don’t just move the shadow slider in this case, is because if you move it too far, the image looks fake and over-processed, almost as if its wet. Note: I could just move the shadow slider to the right from the basic panel to get a similar result. This one trick improves photos immediately.

Move the Darks slider to the right and notice that the shadows brighten exactly where you want and nowhere else.

Slide the 2 left most dots on the gray bar to the left as far as they go. The double S to the right of the word “Adjust”. Under curves, choose the parametric option. I’ll jump right in and show you my tip and then I’ll explain it to you, so you understand whats happening and how to fine tune the result. It’s just dark and difficult to see whats going on in the shadow region of the photo. (Its the same as the Lightroom develop module).Īfter making basic Exposure adjustments, see the blacks and shadows are all running together. You should be in the Camera Raw window now. Choose Filter>Camera Raw filter if the photo doesn’t open in Camera Raw. In this Photoshop tutorial, I’m going to show you a really cool trick that I came up with, that targets those areas and opens them up (revealing shadow details) instantly, and I’m not just talking about the shadow slider.Ĭhoose File>Open. Have you even noticed, that its really common to find the shadows in your photos are too dark? Even after setting the correct exposure, that mid-tone to shadow area still seems too plugged up. Fix shadows in Photoshop with this Parametric curve trick

Adjust level to make darks darker and lights lighter