December 6, 2025
The Tone Equalizer is your tool for local brightness adjustments. It is the modern, much better replacement for the old “Shadows and Highlights” module.
Its task: Brighten dark areas and darken bright areas without making the image look flat or creating halos (glowing edges). It works similarly to the classic “Dodge & Burn” in the darkroom, but fully automatically based on brightness.
The “Magic”: The Interactive Cursor
Most users fail because of the many curves and sliders in this module. Yet you almost never have to touch them! The Tone Equalizer is built for operation directly in the image.
Here is how the simple workflow works:
- Activate the module.
- Go to the “Advanced” tab.
- Move the mouse into the image:
- Point to an area that is too dark (e.g., a shadow in the face).
- Scroll the mouse wheel: Up to brighten, down to darken.
- You see how the curve in the module adjusts automatically!
- Repeat this for areas that are too bright (e.g., clouds) by pointing there and scrolling the mouse wheel.
The module automatically detects which brightness ranges you have under the mouse and adjusts only those.
The Mask: When the default is not enough
In the background, the Tone Equalizer automatically creates a mask to separate brightnesses. Usually, this works perfectly “out of the box”. You don’t have to worry about it.
Pro Tip: For extreme contrasts (“Advanced” Tab)
Sometimes you have an image with extreme brightness differences (e.g., interior with a view through a sunny window). It can happen that the Tone Equalizer cannot “grab” the very bright or very dark areas.
Then a look into the Advanced tab helps:
- Mask exposure compensation: Move this slider if you notice that the equalizer is not correctly capturing the highlights or shadows. Watch the histogram in the module – it should be centered so that you can edit all brightness ranges.
- Mask contrast compensation: Helps to adapt the mask to the contrast range of your image (spread or compress).
If it looks weird (Halos):
Go to the “Masking” tab.
- Smoothing diameter: Controls how soft the mask is.
- Larger value: Softer transitions, less local contrast, but less risk of artifacts.
- Smaller value: Preserves more local contrast (“punchier”), but risk of halos increases.
Summary
- Use the Tone Equalizer to brighten the foreground or darken the sky.
- Forget the sliders – use the interactive cursor and the mouse wheel directly in the image.
- It is the perfect partner for AgX or Filmic: These take care of the global contrast, the Tone Equalizer of the local details.