Brightness / Contrast

The “Brightness / Contrast” I think, is the most simple way to adjust the brightness of an image change.

All you have to do is press the “Image” in the menu bar, choose “Adjustments” in the drop-down menu, and clicking on “Brightness / Contrast”.

This shows the dialog “Brightness / Contrast” where we can adjust the brightness and contrast (1) through the two sliders.

The same can be done by placing the mouse pointer over the slider and when the cursor changes into a hand, click and drag it(2).

If you prefer to type in the values, no problem, place the course in the textbox and type (3).

A second way to adjust the brightness and contrast, is by making use of an adjustment layer. More about adjustment layers, I will tell you in a later section of this course, but I wouls still like to show it to you here.

An adjustment layer is a layer that you add to your photo and where you can make adjustments.

I hear you thinking that this is nothing new and that’s right, we had already allocated a button (4) at the bottom of “Layers” panel in previous versions of Photoshop.

What is new is the “Adjustments” panel.

To add an adjustment layer, the first thing you do, go to the “Layers” (1) panel and open “Adjustments” (2) panel.

Just click the “Window” in the menu bar and select “Layers” and “Adjustments” in the drop-down menu.

At the top of the “Adjustments” panel (2), we find 15 different icons (3) with 15 different commands for adjustment layers.

I said this many times, but when the mouse pointer is over an icon, its name will appear.

What we need is the “Brightness / Contrast” command and this is the first icon.

When we click on it, an adjustment layer is added (1) in the “Layers” panel.

An adjusting layer consists of two parts, which are shown by two icons.

The left part (icon) represents the adjustment, the right part (icon), a mask.

We do not need the “Mask Part” for what I want to show (more on masks in a later lesson). So you can drag this part to the trash (2) at the bottom right of the “Layers” panel.

In the dialog that appears, click the “Delete” button.

What you would still have to discuss is the adjustment layer with only one icon (3).

When the adjustment layer is selected, change the “Adjustments” panel with the tools to adjust the brightness and contrast (4).

This is different from earlier versions of Photoshop, where a dialog was opened for each modification.
The advantage of using an adjustment layer for color corrections, is that we can modify or delete this adjustment at any time and especially these changes are not applied to the picture but on a layer above.

If you have made changes, you should be able to save the picture in a format that supports layers, such as PSD or TIFF. But more about that when I talk about “layers”.

To return to the list of various adjustments, click the right pointing arrow in the menu bar of the “Adjustments” panel (5) or select the underlying layer, the “Background Layer”.
But more about layers, adjustment layers and masks in subsequent lessons, we’ll get a little further with “Color Correction”.

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