How to use Photoshop Curves and Levels (and why I ALWAYS use Curves)

Photoshop Curves and Levels are some of the best tools available to improve the quality of your photos. Both offer the ability to impact contrast, tone, and white balance. Curves offers complete control, but can be a little confusing to understand initially. While Levels is more intuitive to understand initially, it has some significant limitations and is, ironically, very confusing when you want to make more specific adjustments.

In this video, I run through the basic options to use both tools. I also demonstrate how the midtone (gamma) slider in Levels is its "achilles heel". The midtone slider causes confusion/problems by impacting both brightness and contrast at the same time.

Key segments:
0:00 Introduction
1:22 Black point in Levels
3:10 Overview of Curves
3:40 Lighten/darken with Curves
4:47 Increase/decrease contrast with Curves
5:59 Black point in Curves
6:21 White point (Curves and Levels)
7:15 Output (Curves and Levels)
8:33 Midtone slider in Levels, and the Curves equivalent
11:48 The problem with Levels (midtone slider)
14:40 Head to head adjustment showing benefit of Curves