Lessons

Lesson Info

Correcting Color and Lighting

so we've been talking a lot about color effects and black and whites and all kinds of things like that. Now I want to get into showing you had a color. Correct your images like the pros do it. We're going to use what's called a levels adjustment layer and levels simply is talking about the level of brightness of the pixels that are found in your image. And by changing their level of brightness, you can make light areas lighter, dark areas darker and do a whole lot of color and lighting correction. And since we're going to use an adjustment layer, it's all gonna be nondestructive. And as you already know, by using an adjustment layer, it comes along with a layer mask. So if part of your image needed a color correction, but the other part didn't, then you could use your layer mask to hide the fix from the parts of image that didn't need it. So that's what we're gonna do next. If you're following along, we're gonna use image Number 17 is cleverly called Levels Adjustment layer. So will po...

p this open. This is a shot that I was lucky enough to get years ago while I was teaching at Macworld Expo in San Francisco. The subject matter is great, but boy does the image quality. It's terrible, is really flat. There's very little contrast in there. If you were to look at the image closely, you'd see that nothing is black. It is very faded, very washed out. So we're going to fix all that with the levels adjustment. So, of course, you can create a levels adjustment layer either by using the half black, half white circle the bottom of the layers panel. Or you can go up to the layer menu and shoes. New adjustment layer levels doesn't matter which way you do it. So as soon as you click on levels in either of those menus, then elements asked you to name that layer, and it's it's going to give it the name of Levels one, and that's just fine. I'm gonna go ahead and leave that like it is. And then immediately down here in our layers panel, you see that elements did indeed add a levels adjustment layer. Okay, so it's got that same layer mass that we've been working with our original images still down here, all padlocked and safe. We're not gonna harm a single pixel on top of its head. But if we cruise on up here to the adjustments panel, which opened automatically when we created that layer, okay, this popped open of its own accord. What on earth are we seeing here? Well, let's talk a little bit about this. This is called a hist a gram right here. And I like to think of it as a mountain range, and that's a perfectly fine way to think about it. This mountain range is really a collection of tiny, tiny bar graphs. Okay, if you can imagine, a slew of bar graphs are really narrow and smashed up against each other. That's what you're seeing. And these bar graphs are telling you how many pixels in your image there currently are at different levels of brightness, that's all. And that's where the levels adjustment got its name because we're adjusting brightness levels. Okay, so how do you know what level of brightness any of these little bar graphs are referring? Teoh? Well, that's what this grayscale slider is for underneath the history ram. So if you were to take a ruler and line it up with this really tall, skinny, spiking mountain and come all the way down to this grayscale bar. That is the corresponding level of brightness that the bar graph is telling you exist in your image. So you just raw straight line. So right here a list to start from right to left. This area right here, the short, tiny mountains. That means you have very few pixels in the image at that level of brightness. And what level of brightness is it? Draw a straight line down to this grayscale bar. So what we're seeing here is that we don't have very many pixels that Aaron the pure white range. Okay. And I'm gonna cough just a little bit here. Excuse me. So we don't have very many pixels in that range. The taller mountains tell us that we have a slew of pixels in that brightness range. So if we draw a straight line down to our great skill bar So we're working with a width of Ah, about 1/4 of an inch or so. And if we, you know, remember what our image looks like? Sure enough, we really do have a slip pixels at that level of brightness. So over here, these air really What you want your history am toe look like you really don't want to end up with a history. And that's got a lot of tall, spiky bits or a lot of flat prairies. You know where there's no information, but we're still gonna talk about how to fix this. So over here we've got kind of nice rolling mountains. So between this brightness range in this brightness range, we've got quite a few pixels. Okay, so then when we come down over here we are Mountain range drops off and we've got nothin. That's a big old flat prairie, Texas, right there. Nothing flatter than a flitter my mother used to say. So if we draw a straight line down to the gray scale bar, we see that Oh, that's our range of darks. That's all of our blacks. And indeed, looking at the image, we don't have any of that in her image. So that's what that bar graph is telling you. You'll notice the little triangle sitting underneath our mountain range are filled with color. This first trying to here on the left is filled with black And indeed, if you look down to the gray scale bar, you see that that side of the history and represents all the shadows and your image, the darkest parts. Okay, so this little slider right here, if you were to move it to the right elements, will say Oh, OK, whatever. This range of brightness originally Waas and we know it's in this room right here. If we move the shadow slider to their right, everything that used to be that original brightness is now being set or re mapped to black. Okay, so we're taking Let me just move it back and you can see it happened over here in the image. Emel, zoom out when we get finished talking about the history, Graham. So what we're really doing is we're saying, hey, elements. You know this these pixels right here? Yeah. You think they're supposed to be this color? That's much. By moving that slider, you're resetting the black point. You're telling elements what really should be black? Take the pixels that were in this range and map. Um, toe black. Okay. Same thing you can do over here on the highlights end. So our little sliders filled with white that represents the lightest parts of our image or the highlights. Same kind of thing. If you want to change the white point in your image, you can move the slider. So if you don't remember anything else about levels and history, grams or any of the rest of stuff were about to go over for the next 30 minutes or so. Just know that if you pop open the levels adjustment layer like we just did and you've got prairies on the side of your mountains, then you need to move the corresponding slider into where the data starts. Because it does nobody any good to have big old prairies in your hissed a gram because there are no pixels at that corresponding brightness level. So by moving the sliders in to meet the information in your history, um, you'll be improving your image tenfold. Now, you don't even have to be that precise about it or careful about it, okay, because when you've got an area like this in your hissed a gram, well, where do you stop how far you go and the answer is simple till it looks good. That's absolutely it So I'm gonna zoom back out now that we've talked about that a little bit so we can see how those changes are affecting our image. Okay, so I'm gonna move the shadow slider. Just click and hold on your mouth spent in and drag it into the foot of your mountains. Now I'm gonna grab the highlight slider, and I'm gonna drag it into where the larger bar graphs start. When you have an area like this where there's a little bit of information that's subjective, that's your own personal call. Nine times out of 10 I usually end up moving the sliders in tow where the bulk of the information really starts. So with this adjustment layer down here in our layers panel, we can do a quick before and after simply by toggle ing that visibility I often on. So let's see what change we made. So there's our before there's our after. That's a heck of a lot better even on that screen. So if you don't remember, you know that Oh, these are tiny bar graphs, and they correspond to the brightness level of this grayscale bar down here. Oh, my gosh. You know, then just dropped out of your mind. Just know that if you have flat areas or vast prairies on either side of your mountain range, you need to scoot those sliders in. And it doesn't matter which slider you move. First, you can start with highlights. If you want. Start with shadows. I usually start from the shadows because it's left to right. So now the next question becomes, What the heck is the gray one in the center? Well, if your image is comprised of 256 shades of gray and that includes pure black and pure white Okay, on this great slider controls everything that's about in the middle. It controls your mid tones. Your 50% graze. You can think of this slider as your contrast slider. Okay, so let me show you how it works. Always do your adjust your shadow in your highlight slider again. It doesn't matter which order, Then do adjust your midtown slider last okay. And typically what I do is I click the delivery slider and I drag it slightly to the right to increase contrast. That's it. Now, if you're dealing with an image that's riddled with contrast, you want to get rid of some of it, Then you can drag it to the left kind of even out those tones. And that's really all there is to using levels. Now that's one method. Okay, Probably the easiest method. There is another way to use thes level sliders, and that is by adjusting each channel of information separately. Okay, If you click this little poppet menu that lives above your mountain range, you will see that your image has actually three different history aims for you to look at. OK, there is a separatist a gram for the information contained in the Red Channel, there's a separatist a gram for the information contained in the Green Channel and one for the blue. What we were looking at when we first opened this panel was a composite of all three of those hissed a grams. So it's like a master hissed a gram. Really, It's all three of these hissed a grams smashed together in the one history. Um OK, so it's called a composite or your RGB hissed a gram as we cycle through the different history arms. Notice how different they are from each other. Okay, I'm not gonna not talking about this one, cause that's the master one. So we're not gonna worry about that at the moment. But as we go through, let's start on the rid. Taken mental note of how much of a gap you may have on either side of this particular history. Um, and compare it to the other two. Okay, that's a pretty big difference here. See how our Gaff is nearly twice the size. Now let's look at blue. Excuse me. So now we've got three times the gap. If you're hissed, a grams differ that much. You will get a more pleasing image if you adjust them individually. If there's not much difference between the three of them, it's not gonna make a hill of beans. And you're gonna get about the same effect by adjusting the Composite Channel. But it s so what I do is when I pop open the image, I create the levels adjustment. And the first thing I do is I take a spin through those historians and I see how different they are. If they're pretty similar, don't worry about it. Adjust the RGB or the composite challenged it. But if they're like this image where you've got a little bitty gap, a bigger gap in a hunk in big Gap. Then it will behoove you to adjust them individually. So let's do that now and I'll go ahead and turn off the visibility of the first levels adjustment that we made. That way, we're going to compare them here a little bit. So we'll create another levels adjustment simply by clicking the half black, half white circle, the bottom of the layers panel cheese levels. In this time, we're gonna use the pop up menu above our history, Graham. And we're going to go straight to that red hissed Agrium. Or it doesn't matter which one you do if you want to start with the blue, that one, too. But the point being, we're gonna adjust the sliders for these three and not the composite. Okay, because you don't want to do both so well to start with the red and I'll come down here and I'll move my shadow slider into the foot of my mountains. This one. I'm gonna go ahead and move it, though I may change my mind later on, and you can always go back in and move it back. That's the great, great, great thing about a levels adjustment layer. It's so flexible because this adjustment layer is gonna hang around until you delete it. So if you print this image and you decide I really like a touch more contrast than you can pop it open double click this layer Thumbnail in this adjustment will pop back open with your changes intact that you can continue to fine tune. So I'm gonna go ahead and move the highlight slider in to that that first mountain that may want to change my mind. That's okay. So now I'm gonna go to my green Channel Green History on and move that in near the shadow slider in the highlight slider in. And don't worry about the funkiness that you may be seeing over in your image because it's gonna look. It'll look better when you get finished now will come down to the Blue Channel and we're going to click and drag the shadow slider all the way. The right here in click and drag to highlight slider to the left. Now we can go back to our Composite Channel and this is that This is the history Graham wearing. You want to move your mid tone slider? Okay, So save the midtown cider for the Composite Channel or history. Um, so now, to boost contrast a little bit, I'm gonna grab the gray slider and move it slightly to the right, and we're gonna call that one. Done. So now I'm gonna collapse my adjustments panel so that we can see our layers paying a little bit more. And now let's try to do a comparison here. So this is what we got by adjusting the Composite Channel. That's what we got by adjusting the channels individually. In my opinion, that's produced a much better image. But again, don't feel like Well, you know, I'm gonna be really good and I'm gonna just all my history aims individually. It won't do you any good. And last those hissed A grams differ And I mean a pretty good difference. If you're talking to see Noah tiny to the difference, it's still not gonna matter. But if you've got large gap differences like we had, then you're definitely gonna produce a better image by doing it this way. That is awesome. I have a quick question from Barghouti. Is there a way to see all RGB history grams the same time. Like when you go in at first to see all the different channels, or do you have to cycle through them? You have to cycle, and that's a great question. That would be cool if you could. Okay, so let's take a look at yet another way to use levels. Let's say that dragon, those sliders around isn't that much fun. You'd rather use eye droppers instead, you could do that. So we're gonna go ahead and turn off the visibility of the second levels adjustment we made. Let's create another one. So do the same thing and go down to the half black, half white circle. Choose levels. This time we're gonna use. He's a droppers that are cleverly filled with the color that they affect. Rachel Tip. Those tool tips air so fabulous when you forget what an icon does, because you can hover your mouse over and it will tell you what it does. But when you don't want him to pop up, that could be real annoying. You can actually turn them off and on using elements preferences. You can toggle the tool tips off and on. So anyway, here we are in our levels adjustment, and we've got three eye droppers filled with three different colors. The one on the top is filled with black, which represents your shadows. The one in the middle's filled with gray, which represents your mid tones, and the one that's filled with white represents your highlights. So if you don't want to mess with dragon sliders around, you can simply click one of these eye droppers, and it looks like it's depressed in, gets shadowed. Then you can come over in your image and click an area that really should be black so you can do that way. And that means you don't have to drag the sliders around. So I'll do now so you can see what happens when I do that. So in an energy like this, finding you know where black really should be is a bit of a guessing game, but I've got a tip for you here in a second. That'll show you how to find the darkest part in your image, even when it's hard to see like this one is. But let's just go ahead and guess so I'd say that down here on my bridge, maybe underneath my bridge as probably some of my darkest areas in the photo. So I'm gonna go ahead and give that area single click and elements made the adjustment. Okay, so that was the equivalent of scooting that shadow slider inward. Okay, now, if we want Teoh reset the white point in the image and again, we're just telling elements pay on it. Yeah, What you thought was black or why not so much this over here really should be black. This over here really should be white. So now I'll click the Why eyedropper. And again, it doesn't matter what order you do. These two in, I would say the contrast eyedropper the midterms until last. So now we're gonna set our white point so we can mouse over to the image and you want to click on an area that really should be white. Now, be careful to stay away from reflections because a reflected by area is not a true white. It's a reflected white. But you want to click on something that really is supposed to be the color white. So I'm gonna click on this building down here and it didn't change my image very much. And if I wanted to experience experiment with it, I could click on some other areas as well to see if I got a little bit of a different change. Okay, so you can click several times to keep fine tuning. And now, to increase the contrast on image, I would probably just go ahead and grab the midterm slider, because what happens when you choose the gray eyedropper is elements really want you to click on something that's about 50% gray? That's very difficult to find in an image. Okay, so if you click on something that isn't about 50% gray, you can introduce interesting color casts to your image. But experimentation is fabulous, so I could click on these mountains back here and see what that did to my image. So see how it warmed it up. It was a little bit more towards the blue tones, and now when I clicked on these mountains back here, it gave it a little bit more of a golden hue. So if I didn't like the way that looked, I could keep clicking around in my image, and it would keep adjusting itself for the history and would keep adjusting itself. So that's yet another way Teoh use levels in it. One of them doesn't really work better than the other. I personally find that using the sliders is easier and faster, and I'm all about easier and faster, cause I like going into the outside occasionally. And if you're parked at your computer all day long, you're not in the outside. So nine times out of 10 I use of the sliders. But if you want to use the eye droppers, you certainly can. Now, let me show you one more thing when see if I can remember the keyboard shortcut. We were talking about how difficult it is to figure out where the darkest darks should be in your image and where the lightest lights are in order to tell where to click with these eye droppers. Well, there's a keyboard shortcut that you can use, and I'm pretty near it does work in elements. Okay, so if you hold on a modifier key and that's option on a mat or ault on a PC, your image is gonna turn into this neon kind of array of pixels what you're seeing here are the darkest parts of the image. And I'm gonna actually I'm gonna zoom in a little bit because I want to get that area above where the keyboard shortcut is showing up on the screen so you can actually see what we're we're after here. So I have the black eye dropper activated. If I click and hold down the option key on a Mac or all on the PC, the darkest parts of my image are going to show up in neon colors. So I was pretty close in that thinking. One of the colors down here is probably where my darkest darks ought to have been. So if you can't find what really should be black in your image holding on altar option, your whole image is going to go neon. And the colors that are showing up in neon are the darkest darks. Okay, now, if I'm after my white point, I can choose the why, eyedropper? In this time, when I hold down alter option, I'm seeing the lightest bits of the image. That's what showing up in color. Okay, so I can see those are my lightest parts of the image right there. Okay, So again, while you've got the black eye dropper active, and you may as well wait until you mouse over to the image to hold on the modifier key Because if you hold down the modifier key while you're cursors over here, nothing's gonna happen. So don't let that throw. You have to mouse over to the actual image in the parts that are showing up in color or the ones that are the darkest. And if I've got the white eyedropper, the ones that are showing up white back here are the lightest of the whites. If I didn't have anything that was true, why in the image, then you would go to the next darkest color. Okay, so your widest whites, we're gonna show up as white. If I zoom in here, I think you'll cease and yellow. Yeah, see some yellow starting to show up in here. Those would be your next lightest lights. Okay, so the reds are light, but they're not your lightest light. So you want to be after one of these white dots are one of the yellow dots that showing you where the lightest parts in your image really are. Sell. Zoom back out here, so that's a way to find the darkest dark or the light of slide in your image. If you can't see it arguably, it's tough to see in this image. And if you don't remember what keyboard shortcut that IHS. Just grab one of these eye droppers mouse over cherry image and start pressing down buttons until you find it. That's what I dio gives. It's hard to remember. Is that command and control? Is it all option? So just keep pressing them. And once you get the neon colors, you know that you've hit upon the right one. If you're picking one white ist point, it's somehow adjusting them all. But how much? How much does it move it in or out? Well, it just depends on the image. We could go back and compare the hissed a grams for the different levels adjustments that we made, and you can compare how different they are. But that's kind of hard toe Teoh quantify, because it depends on the image. It depends, you know, you're gonna find that one way you like using better than the other way. You know it's not so much that they do change the image in different ways. But it's it's it's purely subjective, and it's gonna look different on every single image, So there's not really way to say one of them adjusts it a little bit more than the than the other. In my own experience, I find that using the sliders works better for me. You may find the same thing, or you may decide that you like the eye droppers or if you may, it let's say you have an image and you try just in the sliders and it, you know, it doesn't look as good as you think it could Look, then maybe you turn off that visibility of that adjustment layer and you do another one and you try the eye droppers and see now for your own testing. If you like the way that looks right, that makes sense. Any other questions on that part? Probably some of the most complicated stuff that we've we've hit upon so far. In the workshop, there were a couple questions, one from Steve Currie. If you could talk about what the output level sliders air used for Oh, I could, but you'll never use him. Really? Okay, So what these guys were for back in the olden days, these two output level feels let you control the ink on the printer that this file may be headed to. So way back when when printing presses, printing presses were notorious for not being able to get black and white correct? You know, it was the blacks would be to black and everything would be money or the whites would be to white. So output levels lets you control how black your blacks are and how white your whites are on a printing press. You're never gonna be Oh, now in your own experiments with your own printer at home if you find that I'm assuming you're printing on inject, probably are. If you find that your printer seems to be printing too much black or your images or just looking to black, you couldn't come in here and and a justice. So what the zero in the to 55 is telling you is on a in the range of grey scales that are contained in your image. They each have a numeric value, a brightness values, and those values range from zero, which is pure black, so zero is actually counted as one. Okay, zero is pure black, and 2 55 is pure white, giving you a total range of 256 shades of gray or brightness levels. Okay, zero counts is one. That's why you've got 256 if you wanted everything that elements thinks is black. If you wanted to make that print not pure black, then you could raise this number right here, too. Let's say five. See how When I did that, this little slider scooted over so you can adjust the sliders, or you can type in numeric value into these fields. So if you do encounter a printer that you just can't trust to get blacks or whites, correct, then that's a way for you to manually tone them down a little bit by using the sliders or by using the output level fields. Great, thank you. And the question from Sam Cox is, Is the Levels auto button useful? Oh gosh. Well, let's just have a have a look at it on this image, so we'll go ahead and turn off this visibility of the last adjustment layer we made and will make another one. So there is an auto button right here, so you can give it a click. And that's really you telling elements elements. I don't wanna mess with this. You just do whatever you think on give it a click. They did. Okay, so what you might do is, if you're pressed for time, if you just want experiment, click that auto button and then you could still come in in the Composite Channel and boost the contrast little bit. And on some images, that may be all you need. You know, if you're running out of the house and you've gotta do a print before you running, you've got five minutes to get it all done and get in the car. You might be tempted to go with that method, something ready to go any more. Shall we cruise on beating Cruz? You guys have any questions about this kind of thing? I really do hope that that, um, you use levels adjustments because, in my opinion, is hands down the easiest, the fastest, bestest, most amazing way to fix your images. And it's so easy, you know, if you just remember. So look at that history, Graham. And look at those sliders where they are. You know, go through the individual channels, see how different they are. If they're different enough, go ahead. And, Justin, individually save your mid tones Your contrast boost for the Composite Channel, you're gonna end up with beautiful, beautiful images. So you were saying yesterday how you're going to show how levels, uh, kind of takes the place of curves or how you get close to the use of curves? Well, actually, I would like you guys to stick with levels Elements has a toned down version of curves, but I don't particularly think it works very well. I think you'll get much better results out of levels. So rather than overwhelming everybody with that whole can of worms and curves, really is a can of worms. So you can see how straightforward levels is with the hissed, a gram and the sliders. And even if you did want to use the eye droppers, curves is more like a a slew of dimmer switches. My good friend, been Wilmore's one of the best analogies I've ever heard of how curves work as you can consider it as a Siris of 16 individual dimmer switches. Raise the dimmer switch to lighten lower the dimmer switch to darken. Okay, in elements you don't have all those different switches like you do in the big version of photo shop. So the version of curves it's in elements in my own personal opinion out Think, works very well. So I'm gonna make the executive decision to stick with levels. E Do have a couple more questions came through. Um, Simcox. It s referring Teoh Lisa's work pro from yesterday. Where does levels fit in to your workflow? Oh, great question. Where does levels fit into the workflow? So after you've imported and crops, because why bother adjusting pixels that aren't gonna hang around anyway? So I cropped the image. I would do the color correction next. So that would be my step three. Yeah, we've kind of eased into it, um, in a little bit of a different way. We we went through some of the retouching secrets just to get you guys excited, but the levels color adjustment. I would do that as the third step when I move on to any retouching, blemish, tapping that kind of thing. Color fix After that I usually save levels until I've gotten my audiences hooked. You know, because if you start out with levels, holy moly, you can see the eyes glaze over. So I get you, you know, confident that you could do some of this stuff and then I get you with levels. There's been a few more questions about levels I don't mind. Okay, Um, I'm unique. Would like to know if you suggest using levels or if if you think using levels is better than using exposure, recovery and blacks. Oh, well, that's a heck of a question. Okay, So if you're working with the raw image, if you're shooting with raw and you open around emitted elements, you're going to encounter the wonderful adobe camera raw software that the geeks call a CR. And within that software, you have ah, slider called exposure. You actually got a bunch sliders. One of them is exposure. And another one is blacks, where you could make the blacks a little bit blacker. I'm so using those sliders on a raw image is incredibly powerful. Color correction. So, by all means, if you're shooting in raw, make your adjustments in the camera raw software. If it's available to you, it does come with elements. Okay, but you're not gonna encounter it unless you open up a raw image in raw format. So those ciders air definitely the way to G. O. We're not going to cover camera raw in this workshop, but maybe we'll do one at a future date. But absolutely. If you encounter that raw software, by all means, do try to do as much color correction there as you can, because it is a simpler place, the recovery slider that he mentioned. When you shoot a raw image, there's no in camera processing that happens like there is when you shoot J pigs. You might not know it, but when you capture J pic with your camera, there's a little bit of color correction going on in camera. There's a little bit of saturation boots going on in camera. There's a little bit of noise reduction going on in camera with a J pic with the raw image. None of that happens. So that's why raw images, if you were to compare the same shot Rod O. J. Pay the rods, gonna look flat. David is gonna look better because it had that in camera processing. But when you open a thorough image, since it is kind of flat and there wasn't any in camera processing, there could be details lurking in the highlights that you don't necessarily see. Also, when you make an exposure adjustment, let's say you increase the exposure. Show your image gets brighter. You can be forcing your highlights to pure white, which is called clipping. Okay, so you've clipped it. You've taken maybe a really light gray, and you forced it through the exposure change to go to pure white. Well, there is no detail in pure white, mean pure Why is pure white? It's like pure black is pure black in their detail in pure black. So there's a slider in the camera raw software called recovery. So when she making an exposure change, you can drag the recovery slider to the right, and it will go find all those details in the highlights and darken them slightly so that they're visible again. So that's what the recovery slider does. So camera raw is very, very powerful. If you're you got a camera that will shoot in raw format, I highly encourage you to do some experimentation with that. And like I said, maybe we'll cover camera wrong in a in the future workshop. Thank you for that explanation. E I would like to know the why behind something you know, with these questions and stuff. It's a great opportunity to explain some of these other terms that maybe everybody doesn't know what they mean. As you've been talking, we have about 10 or 12 questions that come in that regard. So people are have a lot to ask. Okay, Well, why don't we take a couple more and then we'll move onto something else? Okay, Great. A question from Mary and G A. If you double click, the eyedropper opens another panel. What is that panel for less to see? Oh, so if you double click the eye droppers elements opens up the color picker, which allows you to tell it what color you really want the's eye droppers to change the pixels to. So for example, my double click in the black one. When you use this eyedropper by default and you click on a black or an area that really should be black in your image elements is gonna change it to pure black. But if you don't want elements to change it to pure black and you want, say, really, really, really dark charcoal grey, that's where you can change that here. So it says this is setting your target colors. You're really telling elements. Yeah, I know that you think black pure black is really great. But you know what? It's not because there's no detail in pure black. Okay, so if you would like to instead, um, use maybe almost black, but not quite pure black. Then when you change these colors here and I've just changed the RGB setting because zero is pure black and we raise it to, let's say, as you can see right here from our new the current color, which is really, really black, and then the new color that I have just dialed in is not quite black. Then when you use that eyedropper in the future, elements will be remapping the blacks to that slightly lighter version of black. So it's a way for you to find tune what you want your whites in your blacks to be as you're doing the color correction. So, for example, if we wanted our white eye dropper to change to off why, instead of just pure white where we might actually keeps in detail hanging around, you could double click your Why eyedropper in this one, you could change to something like 45 which we know if why is 255 on the grayscale value bar. And you know that because you could just look right here. That's going to be open. Okay, so Oh, black is zero and white is 2 55 So the numbers really earned a guessing game. So you could change this to, let's say, 2 And now, if I zoom in to see the before and after color chips, it's almost impossible to sit on this screen a little bit better than I can on mine. So now you're whites aren't gonna be pure white. They're going to be just slightly off white. So that's certainly something you can do. And when I click OK, after I made those changes, elements is gonna ask if I want to set those as my new default for these eye droppers. And if you want to, you can say yes and then you would never have to go in there and adjust that again. So now every time you use the eye droppers, they're gonna develop default to those colors. Also, the auto button will default to those new colors that you just input. Okay? And don't feel like you have to do this. This is just another opportunity for you customizing the way these tools work. Now, I will tell you that even though we change those colors doesn't make a hill of beans to these sliders. The sliders completely ignore those target colors. So Onley do those if you're gonna use the eyedropper or if you're gonna use the auto button, that's when those would come in. Andy, did you have a question on that? To make the Brits green? If we wanted to make the bridge green instead of red, we would have to do a whole nother technique because those colors air really only letting you fine tune what you want your black to be. Okay. If anybody out there has experience in printing presses, um, you hold 20 graphic designers out there. You know who you are. Graphic designers are notorious for being incredibly picky. Over what color their blacks are, and in fact, they will mix several different colors to make what is called a rich black, which, if you have a discerning eye in designer, certainly dio then it makes a difference. It's very, very subtle, But you know, when you're a designer, especially in today's marketplace, you've got to be amazing. So that's one additional level of detail in fine tuning and extra care that some designers build into their pieces and even into their color palettes. So some folks can get very, you know, persnickety about what color they want black to be what color they want light to be. But when it comes to photographers, there is an argument to be made for changing these Onley. If you're gonna use the eye droppers of the auto buttons like I say, the sliders don't don't look at those target colors, but there is an argument to be made for changing them because you're not forcing any pixels to pure black or pure y and thereby zap in any detail that might have been hiding in there. Arguably, it's not such a big deal in shadows because there's typically not as much detail in shadows is risen highlights. So but But that is, um what all that is for, I think we can move on. Okay, great. So we've been color correcting this whole image, okay? And I'm just gonna go ahead and throw away some of these other adjustment layers. This is a good opportunity to show you how you can throw away several layers at one time. E think this is the one we like the best. Let's say that I want to throw away this layer and this layer. Okay, Well, when I've got one of them active, Aiken, simply command or control, click the other layer and it will activate that second layer. I'll go ahead and undo that. If I wanted to select all three of these layers, I could simply shift, click the last one, and elements will select everything in between. And then I can throw them into the trash in mass base that still tip for you. So I'm gonna command click this middle because I want to keep it hanging around and then we'll grab the layer thumbnail. And it doesn't matter if they're turned on or turned off. You can still throw him away and one feel sweet and we'll drag him all the way down Teoh the trash icon at the bottom right of the layers panel. So I'm gonna seem out of the same er so we can see the whole thing. Here, let us say for the sake of argument that there were some areas in the image that didn't need the color correction. We just did. Well, since you got this layer mask hanging around out here, you can use it to hide that levels adjustment from certain areas. Now, this is a situation where painting with gray might come in handy because if different parts of the image needed various amounts of the same adjustment, then certainly painting with gray to reveal a little bit of it but not painting with white to reveal all of it might come in handy. So let's just take a peek at that. So I'm gonna grab my brush tool over here and think about what I want to do. In the realm of the layer mass Black conceals, white reveals. So I'm gonna flip flop my color chips by pressing X so that black is on top. Now I can come over to the image will increase my brush size by pressing the right bracket key. Unless just say that the bottom portion of this image didn't really need that much color correction. Okay, so I'm gonna simply paint across that area, and I'm hiding the color correction from everywhere I paint. And you can see how my brush strokes update in the layer mask as soon as I release my mouse button. Okay, so that I can definitely be a useful thing. So if you wanted Teoh, you could come in here and fine tune in myriad ways. You know, maybe only the bridge needed that color correction so you could hide it from everywhere else, but take a little bit of hand painting, but you could certainly do that. Now, let's say that that this part of the image needed some of the color correction, but not quite as much as the rest of it. Then we could come in here and change our foreground color chip to a shade of gray. So to do that, all you do is single. Click the color chip at the bottom of your tools panel, give it a single click, and Elements is gonna pop open the color picker, and now you can just choose a gray from this side of the bar. Doesn't matter what range of colors is set over here in the Rainbow Bar because in the realm of the layer mask, you already know that the only thing that counts is black and white. That's it in all the shade degree in between so you can click anything over in this side. You don't even really have to worry about how close you get to the color cause it's not gonna recognize the color so I can change it to gray, click, OK, and then come in and paint this area. And now I'm hiding some of the color correction, but not all of it. You know, I'm revealing a little bit of it, but I'm toning down the strength of it by painting with gray in the layer mask. So that's another great thing about using ah levels adjustment layer for color correction. Is it so dark? Flexible? You know, you confined tune exactly where it's being revealed, and in what degree of strength to the to the image. Now I'm gonna go ahead and fill my mask with white again, so I'm revealing everything on that layer. I'll choose Edit Phil Layer, and I'll choose white from my use poppet menu. So we go back to square one and I want to show you one more thing about levels was in making a little bit here. Let's say that the color correction look good overall, but it was this a little bit too strong. You could simply lower the layer opacity of that adjustment layer. OK, so we'll just hover over the opacity text label next to the opacity field, and we'll just click and hold down the mouse button and dragged to the left a little bit. So maybe 80% of that adjustment might look better to you after you've done it. So don't worry when you're doing the levels adjustment. If it looks a little bit too overdone, don't spend the whole lot of time no in the adjustment. Messing with the HIST Agrium. Rather know that you can always back off of the strength a little bit, just with layer opacity so so many different, different ways to do this. Now let's say that Ah, 100% of the suggest mint looks good, but you think you could do a little bit better? You know, let's keep pushing this image to see how good we can make it would. If one levels adjustment layer isn't enough, Dip lick ate the thing. So click to activate that layer, trot up to the layer menu and choose duplicate layer elements is gonna ask you to give it a name. So now we've got levels to copy. Now, if two of the levels adjustment layers is too much, maybe wanted 100% in the other one at maybe 25% or 20% that might look good to you. Do you see the flexibility in this? It's just incredible, isn't it? I mean, you could do anything you want, so you can always lower opacity, duplicate the layers what you don't want to do, and there's no law against it. There's no elements police that are going to show up at your door. What you don't really want to do is mess with that history and more than ones you know, while duplicating the levels. Adjustment arguably is doing that, but by you know, lower in the opacity so much. But you really don't want to go in there and keep dinking around with the with the history and more than one time, ideally, once will be enough, and you won't have to duplicate it. But this is all subjective. It's your photo. You know, if you think that looks great than excellent, there's not anything wrong with that. So it is shown you how you can be more flexible with your levels adjustments.