Hi,

I'm a Premiere Pro user, so I don't know what the Mac term is.. :-)

I've got a guy whose footage is wrongly exposed, with bright background, and a kinda shadowy interviewee.

In premiere, I'd use levels, or shadow/highlight to fix it.

The guy is fairly new to FCP, and tried color correction, and that looked too washed out, so I suggested levels and s/h, but he couldn't find them.

What should I tell him to look for to fix the shot?

I told him to look on a forum before to fix something, and he didn't know what a forum was, so it's quicker for me to ask the question for him!
Yoof of today eh? :-)

thx!

Chris.

Final Cut's levels are found in the 3 point color corrector. (I think that's what the filter is called?). Under the 3 color wheels there are 3 lines for levels.
If you have the newest final cut, someone on this forum actually made a levels plugin that you can add to your effects. It doesn't work with my FCP version, but I think it emulates the Photoshop levels people are more accustomed to. You can search the forums for that thread, if that would help.

Learn to use the 3-point color correction filter. It's very nice. After you adjust your levels, the saturation slider is right there in case things got washed. And then you have 3 color wheels to tweak the hues in each of the 3 ranges you adjusted the levels in. Also, don't forget to open up the scopes under the tools window so you can see some instrumentation.