Fixing exposure with a Levels adjustment layer

One of the easiest adjustments to make for fixing exposure is a levels adjustment. …You essentially have three points of control: one for the shadows, one for the midtones …and one for highlights. With this photo open, I'll just go ahead and click the Levels Adjustment …button and it tosses it on. …Notice we've got the histogram here, and what I essentially want to do is pull the black …point in to where the rise begins to occur. That's going to properly set this little bump …here as the blackest point.…

I can then pull the White slider in here to adjust my input level and that puts proper …contrast back into the image. Let's just expand this so there's a little bit more room and …then balance out the midtones. Notice as you pull that left or right how it affects the overall image. …I'm going to favor that a little bit to the right there to put a little more contrast …into the midtones. That's looking pretty good. And then we can take advantage of the output …levels here for White and lower the overall brightest value a bit, to about 235.…