OMG! Thank you so much Mike. I was about to pay for sony’s support because I’m on a deadline and i had seen this problem before. My solution back then was just to start another project but this project that I’m working on was 2 days worth of work and it is due tonight!
Everything had turned bright and I knew I had applied the ‘levels’ the effect inadvertently to my whole project but I didn’t know how to undo it until I came across your post.