Adjusting Exposure

Sometimes an image may be too light or too dark for your

needs. Ideally, a photo should make use of the entire range of
luminosity or brightness from black to white.
This is also true in conventional photography.
If an area of a photo is too light or too dark, it means that part of
the contrast range is squeezed into too narrow a band. There are
several ways to illustrate this and to modify the way the image
output will appear.

Try to lighten the sidewalk in the ph-door.jpg image on the

next page.

Fig. 39. The ph-door.jpg image

1. Save a local copy and load it into Photoshop.

2. Choose the menu item

Enhance/Adjust Lighting/Levels
in Photoshop Elements to work
with the histogram for the
image.
 A histogram is a graphical representation of the distribution
of colors by order of brightness from black to white. The dark part
of the image is mostly in the leftmost peak on the graph.
Fig. 40. Options for brightening and darkening images

The input levels are the values that will be displayed as black
(0 - the black triangle), white (255 - the white triangle), and the
midpoint between them (1.00 - the gray
3. To change these values,
slide the triangles by dragging
them with the mouse.

Grab the black triangle and

slide it to the right, lining it up
with the beginning of the
leftmost peak, changing the
input level from 0 to 16.
Fig. 41. A histogram representing the distribution of colors

Notice that this makes the dark section look worse; you want
to stretch out the colors in that range instead of compressing
them, so move it back to the edge (back to 0).

4. Next, try moving the white triangle to the left just a bit to lighten
up the highlights (moving it too far creates a washed-out effect).

5. Grab the gray triangle and

slide it to the left until the
midpoint input level more evenly
balances the light and dark
areas.
6. Save the image with a new name (ph-door1.jpg).