Originally posted by weaponx525 Hello all
I hope that this is not the wrong place for asking this question. Recently I took some family vacation pics with my K10 and decided that now was the time to try and do some tweaking with the "Levels" adjustments found in Photoshop.
I adjusted the "Levels" of almost all of my pics to bring the left slider and right slider where the histogram begins and ends. I did not adjust the middles slider. I did however adjust some of the pics for overall brightness and contrast.
When I used a print shop to print out the pics, the same print shop I always use for all of my pics, I found that most of all the pics seemed darker than what I am used to.
Maybe the answer is obvious but the main question is: how does the levels adjustment affect the image brightness that much? I understand that without moving the middle slider you are telling the histogram that there are potentially more "dark areas" but I found it strange that all of the pics appeared slightly darker. Even when comparing the original (dark) to the post processed image (definitlely brighter) the developed image was definitely overall darker.
I am at work right now so I can't upload pics to help explain. I hope to upload some pics later tonite. TIA
A calibrated monitor is a beautiful thing, but often the middle slider needs to be moved too.
The left slider affects what the blackest black is, the left one determines the white point (the whitest white), and the middle one is the gamma, or midtone adjustment.
If you are using Photoshop, adjusting the curves rather than the levels will give you some insight, though not necessarily a visibly better result.
Also, is your lab doing corrections?
It could just be bad printing.
Or it could be some of each....