Persona

Levels remaps the frame's tonal range: which input value becomes pure black, which becomes pure white, and where the midtones sit between them. This is the Levels control you know from Photoshop and Resolve, used to firm up contrast or recover a flat image

Controls

The defaults are an identity mapping — with all five where they start, Levels changes no pixel

Input and Output

The input pair decides which slice of the tonal range gets stretched. Raise Input Black and everything darker clips to black while the rest re-spreads across the full range, which lifts contrast; lower Input White for the symmetric result at the top end

The output pair narrows the range instead. Raising Output Black stops the darkest areas from reaching pure black, and lowering Output White stops the brightest from reaching pure white — use both for the faded-film, low-contrast matte look

Input Gamma moves only the midtones: above 1 brightens, below 1 darkens, and the black and white points stay where they are. When you want to shift overall lightness without touching the endpoints, reach for this rather than brightness

Channel

The Channel picker at the top decides which set the five sliders are editing: Master acts on every channel, while Red, Green and Blue each act on theirs alone. All four carry a full set of the five controls, and switching channels changes what you are editing without discarding anything already dialled in

Per-channel adjustments stack on top of Master, for correcting a colour cast or building a split tone

A common move is to raise the blue channel's Output Black and lower the red channel's Output White, which gives the classic cinematic pairing of cool shadows against warm highlights

Processing Order

Levels is a colour stage like color grading, color wheels and color shift, running after bloom and diffusion