8 Reasons to NEVER Use Levels in Photoshop!

hi there this is unmish from pics and perfect thank you so very much for joining me for this video my apologies in advance if this video offends somebody please understand that the tool that you're most comfortable with is actually the best tool as long as it gets your job done that's all that matters this video is just about me sharing my personal opinion about what tools are more or less efficient this one specifically is about the levels levels i feel is absolutely useless tools and i'm gonna share with you eight reasons why i feel so so without any further ado let's get started [Music] back in the magical world of photoshop and please allow me to start by saying this if you have the almighty curves why do you need a sub almighty tool right this brings us to our very first reason levels is lesser than curves in other words we can say that everything you can do with levels you can do with curves and even more let me share with you some examples so here we have a very simple gradient now i have boxed individual colors so that it's easier for you to understand alright so let's create a levels adjustment layer and a curves adjustment layer by clicking on the adjustment layer icon and then choose curves first and then choose levels this is just for comparison all right now let's work with levels right here now in the levels you will see three sliders right if you take the left slider to the right it will make the dark areas darker it begins to lose details in the dark areas as you can see as i take the slider to the right see we are losing this color it's becoming absolutely black in other words we are losing details similarly if you take this slider to the left the rightmost glider to the left we are losing details in the bright areas it's making the bright areas brighter now if you open curves you have the same sliders have a look at it so this slider right here if you take it to the right it makes dark areas darker and this one makes bright areas brighter the exact same thing now you might say on mesh there is this middle slider inside of levels what about it it's not there in curves so levels is absolutely superior here's the thing my friend if you take the middle slider to the right it takes the midtones down all right if you take the middle slider to the left it takes the mid tones up now let me show you the same thing inside of curves if you create a point in the middle just make sure first of all that the input is 128 if you want to be extra sure and if you take the point to the right or the left it is exactly the same thing now inside of levels you have a couple more sliders here as well so you have this slider which makes the dark areas brighter and this one makes the bright areas darker all it's basically doing is that it's adding black and white to the image that's it trust me similarly on curves you have the same thing if you take the leftmost point up it'll make the dark areas brighter if you take the right most point down it'll make the bright areas darker if you take it all the way down the image will become black so all it's doing is adding black and adding white right here now just as in levels you have the three eyedroppers in curves as well you have the three eye droppers now we just talked about the standard features curves can do way more than that so in this case if we create a levels adjustment layer and let's say you only wanted to brighten this level of brightness there is no way to do it in levels you would have to just brighten the bright areas whereas in curves you have the flexibility to do so so if you create a curves adjustment layer you can just use the hand right there to figure out where does this fall in the range so you can click there so now i know where does this fall and i can brighten just that area now along with it other areas are being brightened so i can just bring other areas down to its normal diagonal position that's it so only that area is being brightened without blowing out the details in the highlights or even the shadows if you are going that route all in all what i'm saying is inside of levels you just have these three variables right whereas if you're working with curves you have so many points that you can just play with at any point in the range you can manipulate that now as i told you before everything levels can do curves can do as well even when it comes to automatic adjustments so if you open up levels and if you click on this grid right there you have auto options so you have a couple of options to just enhance it automatically right and we have talked about this in previous videos now here's the interesting thing if you open up the curves adjustments and open up auto options here these are the same options as i told you levels is just a simplified version of curves that's it moving on to our second reason which connects to a first and that is curves has the ability to pick any point in the brightness level range whereas levels does not let me show this to you so similarly as we showed you before in the gradient let me share with you the real world example of it so if we create a levels adjustment layer here we can only make the darks darker and the brights brighter and adjust the mid tones here and there alright however if you choose curves you can create intricate curves intricate adjustments inside of brightness levels and not only the rgb channel but also red green and blue levels also gives you red green and blue channel but not with this level of customizability if we wanted to brighten this area but at the same time we wanted to darken the mid tones at the same time we wanted to brighten the shadows and at the same time as well we wanted to darken the extreme shadows we can all do that with curves now it might look very ugly but it is a very good adjustment for black and white adjustments so if i create a black and white adjustment layer on top of it it looks really cool on that these kinds of adjustments it really gives us a lot of control as to what we want to achieve in our image moving on to reason number three and this is actually a big one levels does not have the scrubby hand which is very convenient in curves let me share with you an example so here in this case let's say you wanted to brighten this area and then you wanted to darken this area so instead of having to open the levels adjustment layer and trying to play with the midtones right there and making the dark areas darker and just trying to figure out a balance here you can just edit it visually with curves and this is how you do it if you create a curves adjustment layer instead you don't even have to worry about the curves right here so you can choose the scrubby hand and if you wanted to let's say brighten this area just click here right just click there and drag it up it makes that area brighter if you wanted to make this area darker just click there and drag it down it makes that area darker if you want some details in what the black top she's wearing just click there and drag it up you have some details there super cool isn't it super convenient now if you want to make some color adjustments as well you can do it here too so let's say we want to reduce the reds in these dark areas so let's go to the red channel simply just make sure the scrubby hand is activated just click and drag it down that will reduce the reds in that area now extreme shadow areas as you can see are becoming very greenish so we want the red back there so you can click and drag it up to bring it back right there it's still looking green so you can go to the green channel and just click there and bring it down you see how much adjustments we can make here now this is not an example of perfect color grade but i'm trying to show how easy it is to work with curves there is no way to do this inside levels so if you open up the levels adjustment here have a look there is no scrubby hand there there's no way you can pick a point in the image and edit it right there on the image not having to meddle with the sliders or the curves let's move on to reason number four it is very difficult to increase the contrast using levels without blowing out the details in highlights or shadows make sense no let me share with you an example so in this case let's say you wanted to increase the contrast but without losing the details in the shadows because she's wearing a dark top it is very easy to lose details there so if we create a levels adjustment layer the only way here to increase the contrast is taking these sliders closer the leftmost slider and the rightmost slider and bringing them closer making the darks darker and the brights brighter now after a point the contrast looks pretty fine maybe i'll take this slider a little more to the right to have more details in the highlights but have a look we are losing details on her top if we take it any further take a look we have absolutely lost details here the contrast is good but we have lost the details in her top with curves you have the ability to keep the details here intact you can increase the contrast in such a way that it does not blow out the highlights or the shadows so with curves first of all let's create a curves adjustment limb you can just create a point on the right hand side take it up create a point on the left hand side take it down just the basics of contrast by doing that have a look look at the extreme shadow areas they're still at the same place we are not making it even darker if you do this you will start losing details here we were doing this with levels because we had no other option but with curse we don't have to do that we don't have to take the leftmost point and bring it down even further we can take a point closer to that and bring it down instead so that way we are not losing details in these areas no matter how low we bring it have a look the contrast here is even more but still we are not losing details in her top moving on to reason number five with the absolute customizability of the curves adjustment layer there are so many interesting effects possible that can never be done with levels let me share with you one you can also choose the pencil right here and create your own curve so instead i'm going to create a zigzag right there so i can create a pretty nice zigzag have a look look at it it's pretty creative isn't it now it might not look interesting but wait till i make it black and white so if we create a hue saturation adjustment layer or a black and white adjustment layer take down the saturation and take a look at it this can be transformed to a perfectly amazing watercolor effect so i'm going to take it a little further right there or do something like this make a zigzag like this this looks interesting now after that we can create one more curve and maybe we can do one more something like this okay this looks interesting now we can work watercolor with it how you might ask it's pretty darn simple now first of all let's unlock the background layer group all of it select the first one hold the shift key select the last one press ctrl or command g now in the background we want something so let's create a solid color adjustment layer we can create a white solid color adjustment layer place it in the background right this is just like a background paper now let's create a negative mask for this group so hold the alt key or the option key click on the mask button to create a negative mask then all you have to do is to take the brush and take a few watercolor brushes and start painting so just paint with white keep on painting make sure you have flow and opacity to 100 so we have the first brush right there take different kinds of watercolor brushes and by the way these are some brushes that i downloaded off of the internet if you are interested you can check the links in the description those links have details as to where i bought them or downloaded them some even i don't remember so you can just keep on painting and create this cool effect let me share with you i took some time to do it and this my friend is our final result i simply placed it on a piece of paper by using the multiply blend mode and a little bit of blender that's it but the point is there are so many interesting effects you can do with curves which are absolutely impossible with levels just because of that one reason and that is you have the ability to pick any point in the range while in levels you just have three variables moving on to reason number six in curves you have the ability to draw your own curve levels does not have that so if you create a curves adjustment layer take a look here's the pencil right there you can draw your own curve so let's say you felt like i wanted a little more contrast and a little more darkness in this so you can simply draw a curve like that so i want to just make the highlights a little more brighter right and as you do that constantly you will see the change in your image i want to make the darks a little more darker and the shadows a little more darker i want to create a curve something like this now you might see some sharp changes with colors because this curve is hand drawn and there are so many little ups and downs it's not very smooth so how do we make it smooth there's also an option to do that have a look at this this is the smoothen option just click on that and the curve becomes smooth now if you want to adjust it with points you can do it as well if you go back to points by clicking on this button points are automatically created for it so then you can adjust it according to your choice and take a look at it it's looking pretty darn interesting isn't it so here's the before here's the after that's also pretty good look coming to reason number seven my friend and it is simply this it's easier to learn one master tool than learning different types of it because if you learn one master tool brilliantly if you just absolutely have complete control over it and if you learn the skills to use it you will automatically learn all its subsidiaries or in other words all different kinds of tools which are based on it you will come across lots of software programs that use something that is based on curves once you learn curves you will have a command over all of these tools eighth and the last reason to not use levels and focus on curves and the reason is you will find this tool on every professional visual editing software whether it is photoshop whether it is premiere pro da vinci resolve or any software there is even jimp or i don't know how to pronounce it affinity photo whatever there is lightroom everywhere every visual editing software i must say professional ones have curves why does it have curve because it knows the software knows the people who make the software they're very brilliant to know that curves is the only tool which is the most versatile when it comes to not only playing with colors but also light to sum this video all up levels is just like having the bass and the treble knob on your speakers and curves is like having the complete equalizer i hope you enjoyed this video and if you did make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you don't miss any other future tips tricks or tutorials thank you so much for watching i'll see you in my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] you

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 249,856

Keywords: piximperfect, difference between levels and curves, curves, levels, adjustment layer, photoshop basics, adobe, tutorial, photoshop, unmesh dinda

Id: zjMH-rxb7UI

Length: 16min 28sec (988 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021