PHOTOSHOP CC
James Paterson shows you how to use the ultimate tonal tool for creative colour shifts and get instant Curves effects with our free presets
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For a long time Curves has been one of the best tonal tools in Photoshop CC and Lightroom. Whether you want to boost contrast, tweak the brightness, experiment with creative colour shifts or make any number of other adjustments, Curves is the tool for the job. As one of the Photoshop old guard that has been around for decades, many of us simply couldn’t do without it.
However, it isn’t the easiest of tools to master and there are plenty of other simpler options.
But avoiding Curves would be a mistake as it quickly becomes the most versatile of tonal tools.
You’ll find Curves in lots of different image-editing apps. As well as Photoshop and Lightroom, Curves features in Adobe Premiere, InDesign and more. What’s more, for Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom users, there’s a welcome new feature. Curves can now be used in combination with masking tools, so you can isolate part of an image and then tailor your curves to the area. Open up the Start.jpg image (see link bottom left), or one of your own pictures and follow along.
PRESETS AND COLOUR
CURVES IS a great tool for creative colour shifts. Target the red, green or blue channels then drag the curve up or down (or tweak the anchor points) to shift colours. The red channel adds red or cyan, the green channel introduces green or magenta and the blue channel shifts between blue and yellow. Your presets for Camera Raw and Lightroom applies colour curves adjustments with one click. Click the preset icon and the flyout menu and ‘Import Profiles and Presets’.
STEP BY STEP CURVES HAS THE ANSWER
Control contrast, brightness and create colour shifts with Curves adjustments
Go to the Curve panel in Lightroom or Camera Raw. The ‘curve’ is a straight diagonal line representing the tonal range of the image, with shadows on the left and highlights on the right, and it allows us to make tonal transitions between anchor points placed along it. We can drag the line up or down. Where the line goes above the original diagonal, the tones will become brighter. Below, tones will be darker.
The histogram shows the pixels in the image, based on brightness. On the left are the darkest pixels and on the right, the lightest, with all levels in between. Peaks indicate high numbers of pixels
