1. In a digital image editing environment, a method performed by a computing device to adjust image data, the method comprising: receiving the image data by the computing device; calculating an image key value, by the computing device, for the image data that describes a distribution of image values of characteristics of pixels of image data; computing a tuning value by the computing device using the image key value, the tuning value configured to adjust how the image data is to be measured to compute an image compensation value; computing the image compensation value by the computing device to cause a biased statistic utilizing the tuning value to approach a target value, the biased statistic placing an emphasis on one or more portions of the image data such that the biased statistic targets the image values for pixels within the one or more portions more than other portions of the image values to compute the image compensation value; applying the image compensation value by the computing device to adjust the values of the pixels of the image data, and outputting the adjusted image data by the computing device.