Restoring contrast with Levels

- When dealing with historical photos,…you'll often see fading.…This is particularly true if you are dealing with…a scanned print because over time…some of the ink or the film can fade,…particularly if exposed to direct sunlight.…One easy way to fix this is with a Levels adjustment…which makes it easy to deal with restoring contrast.…Let's start with this image, here.…One way to really judge an image…is to look at its histogram.…So, I'll choose Window…> Histogram.…

By default, this shows you a composite view.…I recommend clicking here…and choose the expanded view with all channels.…This'll make it easier to judge…what's happening in the image.…In this case, I see that a whole lot of detail…is missing from the higher end of the image.…It's clearly faded.…While we still have a bit of information, here,…in the upper mid-tones and into the highlights,…it's definitely missing and there's a visible gap, here,…at the end.…

You may also notice that the gaps don't line up.…We've seen some shifting.…For example, the blues aren't really aligned…