LEVELS? CURVES? ... EXPOSURE?

A few Photoshop generations ago, the choice was simple: curves was non destructive, but layers was. Or something like that.
Curves is certainly a welcome addition to Aperture, but I'm left wondering: is it an "either/or" or an "and" with EXPOSURE controls (RAW, obviously) and LEVELS?
I'm not one to over-tweak my images, so... any workflow tips?

I think I have to agree with most comments here too. I think it was back in V1, and was still documented in V1.5, that the bricks were placed in an order that was suggested to be the best workflow.
My own workflow always starts with the exposure brick, although it makes sense to apply cropping first if needed. I then set a base exposure correction, using the clipping overlay tool (Command+adjust) to set the black and white points using the Exposure, Recovery and Black Point adjusters as required, depending on how I want the image to look, and Brightness if needed (note that this adjuster restrains the data within the histogram scale, and does not cause clipping).
This is only a base adjustment, and simply ensures I'm working with the maximum data available. The rest just depends on how much adjustment the image needs. Well exposed images shouldn't need much else, although I've made my own version of the iPhoto 'Enhance' tool, which applies a little definition, saturation, vibrancy, and some edge sharpen - all in very subtle amounts.
I rarely use the Auto buttons though, as I find them generally too severe.
Curves I don't make much use of, as I find without experience it's much easier to make a real mess of things. The Levels tool seems more productive if you're unsure of the curves settings needed - it does a lot anyway if you enable the quarter tone adjusters.

Similar Messages

Is it possible to edit (levels, curves, exposure, saturation, etc.) a selected area of a photo (using quick selection, magnetic lasso, etc.) without moving the selected section to another document and editing it there?

I'm trying to edit a portion of a photo of a lake so that the rays of sunlight (the lines that run across the sky) are more prominent, without darkening the rest of the photo. I've sucessfully selected, removed, and edited the sky in the photo (the part that I want to enhance the sun rays on), but I can't figure out how to get that piece (currently it's own document) back onto the original jpeg document. I took the selection from the Background copy if that is of any help to figuring this out.

Another way in photoshop is to make a Group above the photo. add a layer mask using the selection and put the adjustment layers in the group
There is also a forum for the full version of photoshop:
Photoshop General Discussion

FX Factory Plugin Nattress Levels & Curves crashing Mavericks

Recently, I've reluctantly purchased FX Factory plugins - mainly because there's no other way to get Ripple Callouts and Tools (which I find really useful). I say reluctantly, because I learned a long time ago that plugins are one of the main causes of crashes in both old and new versions of FCP.
Over the past couple of days, I've been plagued with crashes and by a process of elimination, narrowed it down to the Levels and Curves plugin from FX Factory.
Those unfamiliar with plugins might think this is easily remedied by simply disabling the plugin. Not quite so. Disabling the plugin causes the clip to go "offline" - so every single clip has to have the plugin disabled or removed and of course, Levels and Curves being a colour correction plugin, the clip must be colour corrected again.
Unfortunately, I have hundreds of clips on which I've used the Levels and Curves plugin. This is a serious setback for my project. From now on, I will use the FCP X color board where possible. I say this with reservations though, because keyframing colour correction is essential in my work.
The clips are long and shot outdoors in the UK, where there's seldom a day which doesn't have huge variations in light levels.
I've found to my cost that if I use fixed exposure, the sun will come out, or clouds come over - and if I use auto-exposure, as soon as any sky appears in the shot, the footage gets adversely affected. Such are the joys of outdoor film and video production!
One of the most urgent modifications needed in FCP X is keyframing of colour correction. I realise there are workarounds, but they are messy.
I contacted FX Factory about the Levels and Curves plugin and the reply stated thus:
The authors of Levels and Curves (CC'd on this email) are working hard to identify this issue, which has appeared with OS X Mavericks. Hopefully there will be an update soon to solve the problem.
Andy

Thanks Ben.
BenB wrote:
1- Never update/upgrade mid-project.
2- Always verify all of your plugins and third party soft/hardware is compatible before any update/upgrade.
I agree in a perfect world, we'd all do this.
3- Always use an ND filter when shooting outdoors in the sun during mid-day.
How will an ND Filter prevent the light level plummeting when the sun suddenly goes behind a cloud (using manual exposure) or when the camera zooms out and the appearance of sky makes the auto-exposure darken the image?
4- Always shoot early morning and late evening when the sun is not as harsh.
Again, in a perfect world. Sometimes we don't have any choice.
Andy

Eyedropper tool isn't working correctly in Levels, Curves adjustments

I have installed PS CS 5 Extended on a new computer running Vista Home Premium. No other version of Photoshop has ever been installed on this system.
The problem that I am encountering is the eyedropper tools in both the curves, and levels adjustment doesn’t work. The actual sliders seem to work appropriately, but clicking an eyedropper and then clicking a spot on the photo has no effect at all on the image.
I do not encounter this problem when I run the 64 Bit version of the program. It only occurs in the standard version of CS5, which I need to continue to use due to plug-in incompatibility with the 64 bit version.
I’ve checked the obvious, and ensured that the “preview” box is checked, and that I have the correct layer selected!
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!!!

Not sure if it could be coming into play here, but the sample size for the Eyedropper Tool (proper) affects the use of the Eyedropper in other dialogs.
Do this:
1. Click the Eyedropper Tool in the Tools panel.
2. Right-click on the image, and choose Point Sample.
3. Now try your Curves function again.
A second possibility is that you have a small selection made somewhere, and the Curves operation is only affecting that, so you're not seeing the change overall. I know you said you checked everything, but you didn't mention checking for a Selection.
If these are not the issues, I have to wonder whether maybe something's wrong with your display driver. Since OpenGL is involved in making the display, perhaps an OpenGL problem could be blocking the ability for the eyedropper to pick up the color. What video card do you have and what version of the display driver?
You can test for OpenGL issues by temporarily deconfiguring the use of OpenGL Drawing:
1. Edit - Preferences - Performance
2. Uncheck [ ] Enable OpenGL Drawing.
3. OK out and restart Photoshop.
4. Does the problem still occur? If so, a driver update may fix it.
Hope this helps.
-Noel

Offset printing of watercolor art

I am a young designer with little experience in book publishing. Currently I am working on a catalog of an artist. It consists of oil paintings and water colors. But preparing the CMYK images for watercolors is a bit tricky for me. There are many watercolors with very subtle tints of color wash, and from my previous experience these light watercolors tend to lose their luminosity after printed. So, I wanted to get a little extra advice on how to prepare the best images for printing watercolors in book.
There are several different adjustment tools in Photoshop such as Brightness/Contrast, Levels, Curves, Exposure, and Vibrance etc. But I don’t know which one is more suitable to make the punch the colors a little more and add a little more contrast.
If you know any other links in this topic, I will be happy to read more.

I wonder if you've ever heard of hexogram printing? You will never be able to replicate a painter's palette using CMYK alone. Printing presses are limited to the amount of ink they can lay down, but I tend to think you are trying to match some pastel type variants in press. There are also certain types of paper you might consider. Paper that will absorb the ink and have some tooth to it. You do not mention how the images are captured. Are they digital pics or scans? I've read your post and I think you need to look beyond Photoshop, a little outside the box, if you will. There are specialty printers, book printers who specialize in archival type work and do a phenominal job reproducing fine art. Of course, there are tools in Photoshop that can enhance an image. You should get Dan Margulis' "Photoshop LAB Color" and "Professional Photoshop". Very, very good references to optimizing images and they have several different approaches to some common problems.

Image adjustments not staying??

Hi helpers!
I have come across a strange problem in Photoshop CS4 - I am trying to increase the contrast in some greyscale line drawings, however no matter if I adjust using levels, curves, exposure - it always appears OK as I'm using the slider bars but when I click OK the image returns to it's original state.
I've tried saving as a PSD, TIFF, JPG, tried saving as CMYK., creating a new layer....
Never come across this before...any help much appreciated!
Amanda

I have been since able to change contrast but only by going into the Window/Adjustments panel which
does not require an OK click to confirm changes.
Glad the images have been fixed but still can't understand why I can't keep the changes in my usual Image/Adjustments way of doing things.

Why Levels mid-point slider and Exposure Gamma Correction slider not the same?

Both the mid-point slider in Levels and the Gamma Correction slider in Exposure adjustment appear to modify Gamma. They even use the same numeric scale.
When Gamma <= 1, both sliders appear to produce the same results (confirmed with a couple of random sample settings and using the Difference blend mode).
When Gamma > 1, however, the results are very different. Levels produces more what one would expect in terms of moving the Gamma curve without moving the white and black points but the Exposure Gamma Correction slider seems to do something very different, either moving the black point or applying a very different curve the produces much brighter tones in the dark shadows.
Can anyone explain why and how these two adjustments produce different results?
Is this a bug with the Exposure adjustment?
By the way, in my limited tests of this I was just using a standard RGB file in 16-bit mode - nothing fancy like 32-bit or LAB or anything like that. Also, Photoshop CS6 Extended. Both 32- and 64-bit versions show the same behavior.
Thanks.

The differing gamma adjustment results also occur in the OS X version of Ps 13.0.1
The situation is worse than you realize, Dennis. Test with a linear grayscale gradient in 16-bit or 8-bit RGB mode instead of arbitrary images. Remember to view at 100% zoom for an accurate display.
Gamma adjustments of less than 1 performed by Levels adjustment layer and Exposure adjustment layer do differ but to a less obvious extent than when the adjustment is greater than 1. Differences can be seen in histograms, and low level differences when differencing layers can be made more obvious by adding an Exposure adjustment layer with the exposure increased.
You'll get further different results by using the gamma adjustment in the "Exposure and Gamma" method of Image > Adjustment > HDR Toning. Notice that the gamma value there has to be specified as the inverse of that in Levels and Exposure.
I haven't bothered to calculate which, if any, of the three gamma adjustment controls gives correct results because that is Adobe's responsibility.
It's quite ridiculous that a common routine giving consistent and correct results isn't being used for all these gamma adjustments. Code re-use makes software more robust, simpler to test, simpler to correct, leaner and overall easier to manage. But what do I know.

Exposure vs. Levels: Differences in Practical Use

I would like to better understand the differences between the Exposure control in the Exposure Adjustment section and the White, Gray and Black Levels sliders in the Levels Adjustment section. For example, I am working on a Raw-format image that is somewhat over-exposed. The Exposure control allows me to force it down by about 6/10 of stop, which seems to do a nice job of adjusting overall exposure, and the results are obvious on the histogram. What I'm not clear on is whether I can achieve the same effect using only the Levels adjustments. I know how to set white and black points in Levels, and understand that the gray level adjusts overall brightness, but is there a way to control exposure with levels or are they two different facets of raw adjustment?

They are two different aspects.
In general, raising the exposure by a stop raises the values of all pixels by the same amount -- say one stop.
If you are familiar with the zone system, then using exposure to change something that is neutral grey (zone 5) and making it white with detail (zone 7), should also pull things that are black (zone 3) to neutral grey (zone 7).
Using levels should not do this -- it is effectively setting black and white points, and it ends up increasing contrast at the same time (because, you could take a low contrast shot, where the histogram was very compressed, and use levels to ensure the photo has a true black point and true white point, thus increasing the dynamic range of the shot).
This is a fairly vague description -- but the way levels and exposure tools work is fairly well detailed, though you'll find a larger breadth of documentation that uses Photoshop as the medium.

Exposure and Brightness, how to use

When a photo needs to be corrected it being too light or too dark, I really don't know whether to use the exposure or the brightness rulers and what to use first?
Since I think I get the same effect, my feeling is that it doen't seem to matter? But I assume that in concluding this I am wrong!
To complicate matters further I also can adjust using the tone curve?
What is your advise?
What to use first and what to use in what sequence?
Can you perhaps recommend a good tutorial?
I use the fine book written by Scott Kelby LR3 but do not find information that is the point I am looking for.
Thanks for your advise!

Exposure sets white point, i.e. its like moving the right wall of the histogram, i.e. rightmost "triangle slider" of a more conventional levels/curves tool.
Brightness lightens mid-tones most, i.e. its like moving the middle "triangle" slider on the tone curve of a more conventional levels/curves tool.
PS - A favorite technique of mine for brushing in intra-shadow contrast is a local with exposure most of the way up and brightness all the way down - if you can see why that works, then you understand the difference between brightness and exposure.
PPS - Anything brightness slider can do, tone curve can do better, however nothing you do with the tone curve can accomplish the same thing as exposure adjustment.
I generally adjust exposure first paying closest attention to the highlights - e.g. increase until highlights start to blow out, then adjust black point, e.g. increase until shadows start to clip (or decrease so they dont), then adjust (midtone) brightness and/or fill-light, then tweak tone curve if necessary. Rinse & repeat... All of this depending on the photo of course - for silohuettes you may want heavy black clippage, and for dark shots you may want a lot of headroom at the right end of the histogram...
PS - In Lightroom 2 I used to favor brightness over fill-light for adjusting midtone brightness, but Lr3's fill-light is much improved and can be used much more heavy handedly, in case you want to bring up the darker midtones, whereas brightness raises the lighter midtones more.
Use the histogram Luke!!!
PS - Also, the tat (bull's eye of the tone curve) is an excellent tool for surveying tones, move it around to see where exactly the dark/light tones fall on the histogram.
Definitions: Contrast = tonal separation, so intrashadow contrast means separating tones within the darkest regions without affecting the lighter regions. i.e. increasing intra shadow detail without increasing overall shadow brightness.
And my favorite technique for bringing out highlight detail (increasing intra-highlight contrast) is simply to paint negative contrast confined to the highlights only. Say what? ;-}
R

Greyscale image, can't adjust contrast/levels.

A very recent problem - I have some greyscale scanned images - nothing fancy, batch-scanned via document feeder at 600 dpi - and my problem is this: I try to adjust contrast or levels, I see the effect I want in the image as I do so, but when I dismiss the contrast/levels dialogue, the change doesn't 'stick'.
I can delete parts of an image, paint-bucket for example works fine, I can save. I expect it's something obvious :(
OS X 10.3.9, Photoshop CS2. Memory is 1.25Gb (yes, I'm a lightweight ;) )

No. What I'm saying is they are
i like
bitmap mode, in that scanned grayscale images of line or halftone pics tend to have very little gray information. It's made mostly of black or white pixels. So Level or Curves adjustments have little effect. In addition, you will get a FALSE preview on any Level/Curves adjustments on these types of images when viewed at less than 100%. Just as you describe.
Same thing would happen if you took a detailed 1-bit file and converted to grayscale. The Levels/Curves adjustments would be available. A preview at less than 100% might show that Levels are lightening or darkening. But when you commit the command, the adjustment seems to disappear! That is because you only have 0 or 255 pixels, you can't lighten white and you can't darken black and there are no pixels in-between to affect.

AE Crash invoking Curves

In seemingly random comps AE will crash and sometimes it'll give me the error telling me it crashed invoking the curves plugin. I'm usually applying multiple adjustment layers with different effects like Finesse, Curves, Unsharp Mask, etc. when this happens. Sometimes I can bypass this by rendering out the footage with only one of the adjustment layers turned on then re-importing that. Then turning on another adjustment layer, rendering out, re-importing, etc. until I have all of my adjustment layers active. The footage is AVCHD, but it also crashes with ProRes footage.
I'm on CS6 (fully updated) on a MacBook Pro: i7 2.7GHz, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GT 650m, SSD.
Thoughts?

You do realize that Color finesse in and of it's self contains levels, curves, hue, saturation and more in one interface, it just uses a different set of controls to adjust about everything in your image except sharpness.
That said, I understand the thought process of trying to emulate nodes using the opacity of an adjustment layer. I use masks, track mattes, and opacity on adjustment layers all the time to control effects and that's a good and normal workflow. My suggestion would be to put Color Finesse or Colorista or Magic Bullet or whatever you choose to use as a color grading tool on the first adjustment layer in your comp, do 90% or more of your work there, and then use an adjustment layer with masks and opacity to fix any other problem areas. I've never seen a project that needed more than one or two additional adjustment layers to fix problems that could not be corrected with a single layer.
You'll find the workflow is faster and you'll get more done and make changes quicker. Great Colorists simply the process as much as they can so they can get work done, get paid, and get another client. Think about it...
As for Curves crashing I think you're just running out of system resources. The calculations required to blend all of the pixel adjustments under an adjustment layer are cumulative.

Exposure bias EXIF search

Hello yet again,
Using latest Aperture on G4 PB, I have my 5D set to 1/3 stop exposure bias but I am having trouble performing searches for images at specific levels of exposure. When I filter based on 'Exif + exposure bias + greater than/less than/is + -2/-1/0/1/2/' each individual combination works fine. Similarly so when I use 'exposure bias + greater than/less than + -0.3/0.3/-0.7/0.7'. But if I put in 'exposure bias + is + -0.3/0.3/-0.7/0.7' I get no results. With +or-1/3 exposures I worked out that 'exposure bias + is + -0.33 or +0.33' does work. But I cannot get 'exposure bias + is + -0.7/+0.7' to work at all. I tried going through 0.70 to 0.79 but with no success. In the metadata window it shows up as 0.3ev or 0.7ev and I have also tried copying it exactly (including ev) but it doesn't work.
Help!
Ross

The values of exposure bias are:
-2 .........> -2.00
-1 2/3 ..> -1.67
-1 1/3 ..> -1.33
-1 .........> -1.00
-2/3 .....> -0.67
-1/3 .....> -0.33
0 ..........> 0.00
+1/3 ....> +0.33
+2/3 ....> +0.67
+1 .......> +1.00
+1 1/3 > +1.33
+1 2/3 > +1.67
+2 .......> +2.00
Karsten

How do I make my photos look better?

CORRECTING YOUR IMAGES WITH AUTO ADJUSTMENTS
Photoshop has a lot of ways to help make your photos look their best. But as a beginner you don't have to get caught up in terms like levels, curves, or histograms. Just start with Automatic Adjustments. It gives you a great way to get your images looking really good, and you can build from there.
AUTO CORRECT COLOR - VIDEO 06:56 min.
ADDITIONAL LEARNING
ADJUSTING IMAGE COLOR AND TONE - Reference Guide
For a little more advanced understanding of what all the different adjustment settings are in Photoshop check out Adobe's reference guide.
MAKE IT SHARP - Discusson / Post
After making color and tonal adjustments, getting your photos to look sharp is a final step before sharing, posting, or printing.
PHOTO ADJUSTMENTS KEY CONCEPTS:
Color Cast
Contrast
Exposure
Lighten
Highlight & Shadow
Saturation & Desaturation
Sharpen

Hi Guys for making your picture brighter there are several adjustments which you have to make , i'll give you a walkthrough step by step. make sure all adjustments depends on your choice and satisfaction.
1. : Adjust the Levels slightly - Not much otherwise it will increase high tones in the picture. Shortcur [Ctrl + L], play with last slider in that window.
2. Adjust the curve to balcnce the tones whose values are now increased. Shortcut (Ctrl + M)
3. Adjust brightness in image Menu, make sure while adjusting brightness you take care of Contrast and Sharpness just to make picture lively not flat.
That's the major things you have to take care of, apart from this there are multiple ways which depends on user.
In case of any issue please reply or message me.
Thanks 'n' Regards
Harkesh Singh Chauhan

Adobe Camera Raw workflow question #2901

Now that I have my new digital camera-dedicated rig up and running I have been using ACR and CS2 to process my backlog of Canon 30D CR2 files. I am trying to get them ready for posting on the internet. Currently I am using ACR only to tweak Exposure and White Balance, then I move the file in 16 bits/AdobeRGB to CS2 where I do noise reduction, levels, curves adjustment, saturation then resize, sharpening then convert to an 8 bit, sRGB Jpg.
I have adopted this workflow because it was similar to the one I used when my old creakin' PC required me to use DPP to do my RAW conversion (and I subsequently did PP in CS with a 16 bit TIFF)
But I notice ACR has many choices and options such as contrast, shadows, saturation, sharpness, noise reduction controls that one can perform prior to RAW conversion. I have read in the past theoretical comments that adjustments are best made to a file during RAW conversion rather than while as a jpg. Does the same apply to a 16 BiT TIFF? In the workflow above, am I working on a TIFF?
I am wondering if I am better off to make all of the adjustments in ACR window instead of the more lengthy process in CS2. Are there any advantages to doing these adjustments prior to RAW conversion? Or is it better to do PP on 16 bit files using layers?
What are the relative merits of processing the file in either ACR window or as an 16 bit file in CS2?
If it matters, I work on a PC and prefer to PP each file separately rather than in batches. But I DO use batch runs in CS2 to save time using Actions with around 10 file batches to do noise reduction and resize/convert to sRGB/save as.
As always, thanks for the time you take to help me out!!

>"What does Pixelgenius PhotoKit Sharpener do that I can't do, perhaps with more trouble, by applying what I've read in his book? And would I have a problem trying to use it with CS3? "
I have a few observations and perhaps Jeff can comment. With images taken with a digital camera at high ISO, noise reduction may be necessary in the capture phase of sharpening. PhotoKit offers the sharpen and smooth option for this purpose. One can exert some control over the smoothing process by changing the opacity of the smoothing layer and the blend if sliders.
In his sharpening book Bruce uses Photoshop's reduce noise and despeckle filters to reduce noise (sometimes using the despeckle filter multiple times), but I don't know what filter is used in the PhotoKit smoothing operation or what parameters are used for the reduce noise filter if it is used.
If you use Bruce's book and the "roll your own" approach, you have more control over the noise reduction process and also the possibility of using a third party NR product such as the Noise Ninja plugin. Furthermore, just as an edge mask is used to restrict the sharpening to the edges, a surface mask may be used with NR to keep the smoothing away from the edges. The surface mask may be derived by inverting the edge mask used for sharpening, but Bruce says that some tweaking may give improved results.
An alternative would be to use the third party NR prior to using PK sharpener. However, you would still need to make a surface mask for optimum results, but I doubt that many users take the trouble of doing this.
In my own work with the Nikon D200 (which has rather high noise at high ISO), I find that I often get unacceptable noise and artifacts with PK Sharpener when used with high ISO images.
Also, many landscape photographers mask off areas of clear blue sky and foliage that do not need sharpening, thereby avoiding accentuation of noise secondary to sharpening in these areas.
>Bruce gave you the recipies...he didn't give you the exact numbers to use. So, you'll have to do what he and I did...trial and error, to arrive at optimum numbers...
For output sharpening, the PK defaults seem to work quite well and the trial and effort of rolling your own is usually not worthwhile, IMHO.

Setting white point in LR

I'm almost sure I'm missing something but I cannot find a solution. I'm using LR (currently 2.2) for quite a while (since 1.2) but I simply cannot find an easy, user friedly and predictable way how to set a white point of edited pictures.
In PS, CR, DPP and most other editing SW and RAW processors, there two typical easy tools how to set the white point.
1) a white point picker which (when used) defines a desired tone as white and the relevant SW then redistributes the tones accordingly;
2) in "levels" or "curves" dialog (or their equivalents it is possible to move the "White level" treshold below which the remaining tones are redistributed accordingly - the iterface varies (sometimes it is the border of the histogram or curve diagram that can be moved (DPP), sometimes it is the slider in histogram or curve diagram setting this limit
botw ways generally lead to the same and quite uniform result. I.e. I'm usually able to get almost identical result by setting white point in PS, DPP, CR, .... and other SW by such simple operation when working over identical picture data.
However in LR it is virtually impossible to achieve similar result in LR. No white point picker, no slider enabling setting the white limit, no chance to move borders in the histogram chart. The only available tools for this purpose are
"Exposure" and "Brightness". None of them providing for the desired functionality alone - their combination giving sometimes acceptable but hardly predictable results (definitely not as predictable as achieved e.g. in PS by simple and single move of white limit slider in "level" dialogue or equivalent step in CR.
Do I really miss something important (I hope so) in this respect or is LR completly lacking this (for me really core/basic) functionality present in all other photo and RAW editting SW I know - even from Adobe?
thanks

I agree with the original poster - I find it troublesome to set the white point in an image. In a situation where a traditional (PS, Aperture) levels control would make it convenient to push a particular tone to white, I find myself going back and forth between exposure and the tone curve a fair amount. Another description of what I want, effectively, is a 'recovery' slider that goes up as well as down.
(See end of post for replies to a few specific points.)
An example:
Here is the original image, with its histogram and tone curve - black to middle gray:
I want to push the small hatch/door to white, but that also overexposes my middle grays (I haven't yet touched the tone curve):
So now I go to the tone curve, and pull down both darks and lights:
However, at this point I've lost my whites (they are not quite clipped any more); and probably more importantly, since the tone curve is at the extreme low values, I have little working room or control.
Rather than working together or providing complementary functions, in this case exposure and the tone curve, to me, seem to be fighting; it requires back-and-forth to get the desired effect.
(To be clear, most of the time - that is, when my white point starts out more or less where I want it - being able to drag the histogram and smoothly-transitioned segments of the tone curve is brilliantly easy and useful. It's specifically the exposure control's nonlinear behavior/effect that I dislike, as it makes it difficult to adjust near-white tones.)
Responding to specifics:
> Also, hold the ALT key (David Edwards)
Cool! (However, not a fix for this issue.)
> the controls themselves are not linear (Lee Jay)
> attempts to preserve highlights (Lee Jay)
> the exposure slider is almost exactly equivalent to the white point slider in Photoshop's levels/curves (Joa V. L.)
I think this is the root of the issue, for me - the exposure control is being intelligent in a way to protect hilights, which is counter to my intent. My experience leads me to disagree strongly with Joa's comment (though I would be very happy to discover I was wrong) - my problem is specifically that adjusting exposure up (brightening the image with exposure) affects tones less, the brighter they are.
> I need to decrease the Brightness (Henry_Deer)
> you may need to generate a higher-contrast tone curve and work with that (Lee Jay)
The brightness adjustment seems analogous to my use of the tone curve, though it's an alternate approach I haven't tried. However, both seem to suffer from the 'several rounds' problem.
Edited to reply to a few specific points

Modern Contrast Vs. Old Contrast

I'm a cartoonist who works primarily in black and white and greyscale, and for the longest time I used an old copy of Photoshop CS2. I upgraded to CS5 not too long ago, and I've been constantly frustrated by the brightness/contrast tool. It just doesn't work like it used to, and I need it to! The problem is with the parts of my pictures that are grey, and the parts that are black. Or rather, the parts that are supposed to be black! Modern Photoshop insists on preserving the vague inconsistencies in the marker strokes on the paper, the parts that aren't quite as black as the other parts. It just won't let me attain large areas of 100% blackness!
I still use that old CS2 program on a secondary computer in another location, and it's easy for me to get areas of total black without compromising the delicate Prismacolor greys in other areas. With CS5, however, I have to increase the contrast to maximum at least three times before the black parts become... well, black! Which, of course, washes out the greys. With the old Photoshop, all I had to do was crank it to about 40% and I'd get nice sharp blacks without losing much of my shading. Now I usually have to use the polygonal lasso to manually select spaces and fill them in, because it's too much to just contrast everything enough to get solid blacks!
Is there any way to get the contrast to behave like it used to? Or is there some other tool I can use? I really don't know what levels, curve, and exposure are. Will I have to learn an entirely new way of altering my pictures before I get the simple efficiency I had three Photoshops ago?

Check Use Legacy and see if that works like cs2.
MTSTUNER

LEVELS? CURVES? ... EXPOSURE?

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