Levels/Curves vs. Brightness/contrast

[Ramón_G_Castañeda@adobeforums.com]

150,

When I typed "what you have been doing" I was only referring to your own description of the task at hand:

"I've been using my self-taught PS skills professionally for many years
and never use Levels or Curves because I get by with Brightness/contrast
when needed."




In other words, I was trying to say "you don't need Photoshop to perform brightness/contrast adjustments", a number of other, simpler applications can do that.

As Jason aptly puts it, Brightness/contrast ... are simple treble/bass knobs.

Not for a second did I intend to comment on what kind of work you do, since I am utterly unqualified to evaluate it. I don't even know what it is that you do. I looked at your links and my total ignorance at once made itself even more manifest, as I had no idea what I was looking at. This is not a judgment or criticism, just a confession about my own unmitigated cluelessness. Again, I was only addressing the use of brightness and contrast adjustments.

My apologies if I my remarks lent themselves to misinterpretation.

[JasonSmith@adobeforums.com]

Ramon, make no apologies or excuses, nor shall 150mph, he obviously is of an artistic talent that superscedes the normal typical use of major color adjustments - he just does what he does, and that's all good.

150 - just keep doing what you're doing, if you're happy with it there's no need to change.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda@adobeforums.com]

Jason,

I will always apologize when I inadvertently write something that offends anybody.

[Paul_Hokanson@adobeforums.com]

150,

I like your work samples. And if this is the type of art you've been producing, it isn't a difficult to understand why you have stuck with Brightness and Contrast instead of diving into Levels or Curves. For certain styles of art, things like midtone detail and highlight and shadow clipping are less important than the final message the art portrays. If you begin to incorporate photo-realistic faces or other objects into your work, you might find the Levels control (at a minimum) will allow you to fix the tonal curve of the image without tossing away valuable highlight or shadow info (as will almost always happen when using B&C). Photoshop has many ways of doing things because its a tool used by many artists working in many different styles. B&C works for you today. Levels will work for you too, if you try it and get comfortable with it. Curves will always work the "best" (but unless you have lots of method under your belt, Curves can cause damage too...). Most of my work is photo-illustration for print work. And to that end, Levels on adjustment layers with Wacom-controlled masking is my typical recipe for success.

Anyway...I'm rambling now. My advice is keep up the good work... try Levels a little bit (its really not much more involved than B&C, but it does show a histogram and that alone will help you understand more about your image and its tonal curve)... play with Curves if you want... and choose what recipe is best for you.

:)

[JasonSmith@adobeforums.com]

Ramon, again, DONT APOLOGISE!! (nobody was offended)

It's not your fault that someone (a noob? - not!?) comes across these forums that has such obvious talent yet has such simple questions regarding the software that he/she is creating from.

I find it quite refereshing. I'm sure you do too.

[Paul_Hokanson@adobeforums.com]

150,

I like your work samples. And if this is the type of art you've been producing, it isn't difficult to understand why you have stuck with Brightness and Contrast instead of diving into Levels or Curves. For certain styles of art, things like midtone detail and highlight and shadow clipping are less important than the final message the art portrays. If you begin to incorporate photo-realistic faces or other objects into your work, you might find the Levels control (at a minimum) will allow you to fix the tonal curve of the image without tossing away valuable highlight or shadow info (as will almost always happen when using B&C). Photoshop has many ways of doing things because its a tool used by many artists working in many different styles. B&C works for you today. Levels will work for you too, if you try it and get comfortable with it. Curves will always work the "best" (but unless you have lots of method under your belt, Curves can cause damage too...). Most of my work is photo-illustration for print work. And to that end, Levels on adjustment layers with Wacom-controlled masking is my typical recipe for success. Both Levels and Curves can "open up" midtone detail, where B&C just mushes it toward highlight or shadow, throwing sometimes needed bit depth into the trash in the process. For me, this makes B&C just about unusable.

Anyway...I'm rambling now. My advice is keep up the good work... try Levels a little bit (its really not much more involved than B&C, but it does show a histogram and that alone will help you understand more about your image and its tonal curve)... play with Curves if you want... and choose what recipe is best for you.

:)

[morrisoncorp@adobeforums.com]

It is easy enough to accomplish the brightness/contrast effects with curves using just the endpoints.
Start there and ease into the realm of curves.
In the long run, you'll learn a tool which, perhaps, will take your art to a new level. (oops).

[Philo_Calhoun@adobeforums.com]

You'll probably find levels a lot faster than brightness and contrast, because ideally you want to maintain a wide range of luminosity between near black and near white with most pictures, and everytime you adjust brightness you will have to readjust contrast and vice versa to get this range. With levels, you can set the darkest areas (option-drag black slider) and lightest areas (option-drag white slider) and then adjust midtone. Readjusting midtones does not require adjusting the black and white sliders, the way adjusting contrast or brightness would require going back and adjusting the other. Curves, as has been mentioned, are like graphic equalizers, and allow different weighting of different luminosities (or colour) ranges. With curves, for example, you can brighten shadows without effecting midtones. That is why most of us use controls other than brightness/contrast.

[Tim_Lookingbill@adobeforums.com]

If you decide to use curves during a scan, don't use the scanner software's curves feature. PS's is so superior.

I spent hours adjusting in preview mode during a scan because it just wasn't as responsive as PS's.

[Peter_Figen@adobeforums.com]

Tim,

It really depends on the scanning application, and some applications actually offer functionality that don't exist at all in Photoshop, like Linocolor's saturation curve.

[Pierre_Courtejoie@adobeforums.com]

What beautiful images you are doing, Larry!

You should take a look at this thread at PST: <http://www.photoshoptechniques.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3847> (the contest is over for a long time, but there are thousands of amazing images produced just by filters)

Before I receive the insults of art naz... [cough]...ahem, art purists, this is done as a GAME to push people do discover the power of the stock photoshop filters; the aim is NOT to put those at the MOMA, even if some of the images are worth hanging on a wall!

[Tim_Lookingbill@adobeforums.com]

LinoColor, I plumb forgot about that highend company. I was so impressed with there scanner package it was a toss up between them and Agfa at the time.

Pocketbook said Agfa from which I based my comparison to PS's curves.

Linocolor's SW has quite a steep learning curve, though.