brian

here's another way of adjusting the levels of your image(s) without going anywhere near the levels dialogue or even a levels adjustment layer. and yet, it still gives a high degree of flexibility and is entirely non destructive.



the image this week is one of the royal navy's 'ark royal' when it visited ardbeg distillery a couple of years ago. you can see that the original image is somewhat on the dull and dark side, and here's how we're going to change that.



open the layers palette either from the palette well at the top right, or from the window menu and select layer. first thing is we need to duplicate the background layer which we do by clicking and dragging the layer to the new layer icon (highlighted) at the bottom of the palette.



if done correctly, you should see the result shown below. if you can't get the hang of clicking and dragging, click the 'more' button at the top right of the layers palette and select 'duplicate layer'.

we now have two identical layers situated one on top of the other. we're now going to change how these two layers interact with each other by altering the 'blend mode' from the top left of the layers palette. by default this is set to normal, but clicking the small arrow to the right will display a list of different blend modes, some of which are shown in the screenshot.



because we'd like to lighten this photo, we'll choose 'screen' and have a look at the result.



cool huh?

if the result is not to your liking, you can either change the opacity/transparency of the layer or dump the duplicated layer and start again. if you're feeling really dangerous, try some of the other bland modes - you'll get some interesting results.