Richard,

On page 70 of HPE for PS Elements 2 you talk about tails in the Levels Histogram and clipping them. I understand the concept of tails and the need to sometimes eliminate them (clip, cut, snip, crop, etc..) But I couldn't find an explanation how to eliminate tails.

Thanks,
Ed

Pages 95-98 discuss what to do. You really just move the sliders and then click OK. Elements takes care of the rest.

Create a Levels adjustment layer and hold down the alt key when moving the right or left slider. That will show you which pixels are getting "clipped" i.e. pixels which will be changed to pure black or pure white and therefore won't add any detail to the image.

Create a Levels adjustment layer and hold down the alt key when moving the right or left slider. That will show you which pixels are getting "clipped" i.e. pixels which will be changed to pure black or pure white and therefore won't add any detail to the image.

I didn't know that one...interesting..thanks! (I knew about holding down the alt keyto change cancel to in the adjustment layer dialogue boxes...)

Susan S.

Your welcome Susan S. I can't remember where I got that one. If you're interested, here are some other Curves interface tips I've read about:

1)alt + click the Curves graph and the graph will divide into 10 zones

2)Hold the left mouse button down and drag over your image and you can see where the pixels fall on the curve.

3)ctr+click on the image and it creates a point on the graph for that pixel.

4)Hold down the alt key to bring up the Reset button to start over.

5)Click on the pen tool at the bottom and you can draw freehand curves. Click on the Smooth button to smooth the curve.

6)Options button: opens up a dialog box that allows you to do semi-automatic color correction. See this tutorial:
http://www.informit.com/isapi/product_id~%7BDCAB02EF-ECAE-4DB7-9833-5231BCBA2384%7D/element_id~%7B81E3CD5A-762E-4E8F-9AC9-4A0AC5D71864%7D/st~%7B30DCE543-8F6C-4B3A-A0F2-F9739BA4F054%7D/content/articlex.asp

Pages 95-98 discuss what to do. You really just move the sliders and then click OK. Elements takes care of the rest.

Richard,

Thanks for reply. It was a case of asking question before reading the next section.

...Curves interface tips I've read about:

1)alt + click the Curves graph and the graph will divide into 10 zones
...

If you are a B&W photographer, and familiar with the Zone System, those 10 zones correspond to the zones (tones) of the Zone System. It's a handy thing for a photographer to know how those divisions relate to the Zone System.

Stephen B.