Differences Between BRIGHTNESS, CONTRAST, LEVELS AND EXPOSURE in Photoshop

Hello friends! Are you learning Photoshop and got some doubts while editing the image’s brightness, contrast, level, exposure, etc. Don’t worry, you are in the right place.

In this blog, we are going to look at the workflow of every term in detail. This content will help you enhance your skills for photo editing training.

All these tools are made to adjust the tonal range of any object/image. One can easily arrange the brightness and contrast as well as the darkness and dullness of any specific color. On the other hand, all these tools have their own specialties which are explained below.

First talk about BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST : -

That tool lets us make simple changes in the total range of an image. Every editor uses the tool to do professional editing and it's the best-known tool for editing purpose. To get to the BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST tool, click on IMAGE at the top of the screen, move into ADJUSTMENTS and you will find the very first option of BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST. 

When you click on that you'll get an adjustment menu. Moving the brightness slider to the right increases the tonal value and expand highlights, dragging the slider to the left will decreases the value and expand shadow. At the right of the menu bar, you will have an AUTO key, press the key to adjust the tonal range automatically. After setting up all the levels, simply click on OK to save the adjustment.

What are LEVELS/ Use of LEVELS: -

LEVELS tool lets us make some simple changes in an image. Levels can be used to adjust the image brightness level – shadow, midtone, and highlights. You will find the LEVELS tool at the same location as BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST. 

You can use CTRL+L as the short key of LEVELS. To get the window you need to click on the adjustments in the image menu. After that, a menu bar will be popped up with some unique features. 

There would be different types of presets and any one of them can be used at a time. It has three types of channels and you can choose any of them. A value bar can be seen down there so you can put the specific value of channels. The final step would be to press OK to save the changes you did.

What is CURVES/ Use of CURVES: -

CURVES is something which is used to set the contrast value of an image. Move into IMAGE at the top of the screen then click on ADJUSTMENT and 3rd row would be of CURVES. 

Press the CURVES key and it will take you to the menu of Curves. Here, you can see a graph. You can add more points on the line and when you move the points, the shape of curves will be changed. In the end, just click on OK to save the setting you made.     

What is EXPOSURE/ Use of EXPOSURE: -

EXPOSURE is not much diff. from BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST and LEVELS. As it also can be used to maintain the tonal range of an image, but professionals mainly use it to correct the total value of high dynamic images, which are 32 bits.

As we know, the more bits, the better, the color. EXPOSURE can be applied on 16 bits images or even 8 bits images, as well.

Lets’ see how to find EXPOSURE tool in photoshop. On the top right corner, move into IMAGE then click on ADJUSTMENTS and it would be in the 4th row. Press the EXPOSURE key to open the adjustment bar.

Once you open it, you’ll see a menu bar. There would be a few types of presets, you can choose a suitable one. Just down to it you will find three scales, 1st for Exposure, 2nd for Offset and 3rd for Gamma Correction. Moving left on all scales will lead to decrease in value and getting the scale in right, will expand the value. After all the changes, click on OK to save the changes.

So, that’s it.

This is how we can play with the adjustment settings of image menu in Photoshop.

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