How to Set Color & Tone with the Curves Adjustment in Photoshop

[15Katey]

The Curves tool in Photoshop is one of those areas that’s widely misunderstood. Not only is it misunderstood because editors don’t know what it can accomplish, but many folks also don’t know how to use it. While it does take some practice, it can actually do a lot. There are a few other tools to can accomplish similar tasks, but it’s always good to know everything within the program you’ve decided to earn your livelihood with.

In this post, I’m going to lightly touch on the Curves tool. This same tool, or others very similar to it, can be found in multiple applications, so life can become exponentially easier if we become more familiar with what it is we’re looking at. My goal today is to erase some of the mysticism that surrounds areas like this. This won’t be thorough coverage, but more of a brief overview that’s designed to simply allow you to become more acquainted with this panel.

What is the Curves Tool?​

In Photoshop, using the Curves tool is a very powerful and effective method for adjusting tones to brighten, darken, add contrast and shift colors. Despite all this, many editors shy away from it. Let’s take a look at how we can enable the panel.



If you take a look at the screenshot above, you’ll see that I circled an icon that resides in the Adjustments panel. If you don’t see this panel, head up to Window > Adjustments and select from there. Once you do that, you should see the panel appear. Go ahead and click the icon I circled. If you’re not sure which one it is, hover over it and wait for the Create a new Curves Adjustment Layer popup info box. If you see that, you’re in good shape.

After you click the icon, you’ll see two things happen. The first thing you’ll see is the Curves panel appear to the left (or right – depending how you have your workspace set up) of the Adjustments panel. The second thing you’ll notice is a new layer directly above the layer you had selected in the Layers panel. This new layer is called an Adjustment Layer and it’s where all your changes will take place. The nice aspect of Photoshop creating a new layer for this is that you get to preserve your original layer. If you decide against your changes, you can always delete the adjustment layer and go back to the beginning.

Now, there is another method of going about the same task. While you’re in the Layers panel, you can go down to the bottom and click the small white and black icon to make the adjustment layer menu appear.



When you see the menu, you merely need to select which type of adjustment layer you’d like. In this case, I would choose Curves.



This second method will give you the same result as the first.

Activating the Adjustment Layer​

This is just an FYI. If you ever close the Properties panel (where the Curves function is held), you can reopen the panel by double-clicking on the small half-half circle icon that’s in the layer itself.

The Curve Line​

This is the section you need to read clearly. This is where I explain the basics of how the curve line is set up. If you look inside the panel (which I’ve undocked to see more clearly), you’ll see my sample photo’s histogram.



This histogram represents the tonal range of my photo. If you’ve read the previous posts that talked about histograms, you already know what I’m referring to. If you would like, you can review those posts here:

How To Use Your Camera Histogram For Awesome Photos

Using the Levels Adjustment in Adobe Photoshop for Photography

Inside the Curves panel, there are two axes. The horizontal axis represents the tones of the original image (the input) and the vertical axis represents the tones of the values we create by editing inside this panel (the output). They both begin dark in the bottom left corner and lighten as they move toward the upper right. The diagonal line that begins at the bottom left and continues to the upper right is where we can add control points, which we can push and pull to adjust and alter the curve of the line, which, in turn, will adjust and alter the tone of the image. While it’s common to add only a few control points, it’s possible to add up to fourteen of them. Simply put, inside of the Curves adjustment, editors have the ability to adjust points throughout a photograph’s tonal range.

It’s important to note that as you add and remove points (which we’ll cover next) to and from the adjustment line, the shape of the line has the ability to change. This new shape is considered a representation of the adjustments you made. So, if you hide the adjustment layer, those changes will disappear and if you unhide the layer, those adjustments will appear once more.

Adding & Removing Control Points​

Adding control points is extremely simply. All you need to do is to click on the adjustment line with your mouse pointer. As I said, you can add up to fourteen of them (to end up with sixteen total).



To remove the control points, you can click and drag each point from the line. Just click right on each one of them and drag them out of the Curves panel. In actuality, you can simply drag each point off the line and once it hits a certain distance, the point will disappear, but in practice, it’s prudent to drag each point further. Another method of removing a control point is to select it (so it turns solid) and hit Delete on your keyboard.

PS – I only added the above control points as an example. I already removed them to continue on with example photo in this post.

Adjusting Color & Tone​

In this next section, I’m going to go ahead and add some control points to adjust the color and tone of my image. I’ll explain what I’m doing throughout. Before I begin, I want to give you a word of warning. When many editors begin using the Curves adjustment tool, they start off by adding a control point and moving it one way or another, not really knowing what they’re doing. They know the goal – to make their image look better, but truly, they’re guessing at what their specific control point and adjustment will accomplish. This isn’t good. Because of this, I’d like to offer a few rules of the game.

1. Adding a control point and dragging it up or down will lighten or darken the tonal area you’re adjusting.

2. Adding a control point and dragging it left or right will increase or decrease the contrast of the area you’re adjusting.

3. The steeper sections of the adjustment line represent areas of higher contrast, while flatter sections represent areas of lower contrast.

So, if you head into this panel and use these rules as a guide, you’ll save a lot of time by targeting exactly what it is that you’d like to accomplish as opposed to flying blind.

If I look at my example image, I can see that it’s got a lot of darks or shadows in it that aren’t very crisp. It’s also fairly washed out looking, meaning, there isn’t enough contrast. Lastly, it appears that some of the highlights are too high, resulting in an image that has lost detail in that regard. It’s because of these attributes that I chose this particular photograph.



The first area I’m going to tackle is the washed out looking black ones. I can see that my histogram abruptly ends over towards the left, yet the adjustment line continues past it. I think it may be beneficial to increase some of the contrast by dragging my existing bottom control point to the right.



As you can see, the image is already looking a lot better. If I add a control point a bit higher on the adjustment line and pull it down, I think I can darken the shadows even more and also add some detail – all in one fell swoop.



By simply moving the lowest control point to the right and by adding a control point to the adjustment line and dragging down and to the right slightly, I was able to darken the sky, reduce the glow around the lights on the bridge and add detail to the ripples in the water. Not bad.

Behind the scenes, I’m adding control points, adjusting then and removing them. It appears that I’ve hit the end of the road with what I have been working on. I’m actually going to stop here. I do want to let you know, though, that there are a series of presets available to us in this panel. For instance, if I click the top drop-down box, I can flip through these choices and select something that fits what I’m working on. At the very least, if I select a preset that improves my image, I can use that as a starting point.



Also, we have the ability to alter the overall color of an image, by clicking on the drop-down directly below the preset drop-down. Above, I was working in RGB mode, but if I clicked this drop-down, I could have easily chosen Red, Green or Blue to work on and adjust.



Please let me know your thoughts on this tool. I don’t use it all too much because I feel that other tools have more forgiveness as well as flexibility, but it’s good to know it’s there. If you do use it frequently, please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

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If you’ve enjoyed today’s post and found it helpful, please share it with a friend. Thanks!

 

[JodyBuchanan]

Hi. Great post (as usual)! Question: When you showed the image with all of the control points, were all of the *subsequent* tweaks done with those points activated? Or were they all removed before you moved onto the next part of the article?

One other question: Do you ever use portraits as example photos? In addition to landscapes?

 

[15Katey]

Hi – Good catch! I just updated the post to make this a bit more clear. I added those points as an example of how many were allowed on the adjustment line at one time. After I was finished with that example, I removed all 14 control points and continued with my example photo with a fresh, empty adjustment line.

Regarding the editing of portrait photos – I will probably get more into that in the future. There’s really no reason I haven’t used them in my posts. I thinks it’s because I’m really into nature and landscape, but again, I’d like to work on some portraits because there’s a lot of interest out there in that type of photography.

Thanks for the comment!

 

[15Katey]

How to Enhance Color Using Curves in Adobe Photoshop​

The Curves feature in Adobe Photoshop is really fun to talk about. People discuss it all the time. They’re like, “Hey man, I made my photo look totally better with curves the other day.” “Yeah, me too,” someone else would reply. The fact of the matter is that very few people know what in the world Curves does. Yeah, I know. We’ve all gone into this panel and pulled the little line one way or another, but the truth is, most of us straightened it back out before leaving to head towards a more intuitive slider option. Curves can do a lot and can really make a photo pop, but before even attempting this, an editor needs to have a goal. They need to ask themselves what they would like to accomplish while using this tool. Simply messing around with something isn’t good enough and it’s oftentimes a waste of time.

In today’s post, I’ll be doing a bit of exploring inside of the Curves Properties panel in Adobe Photoshop. I’ll try to keep things simple. Basically, if you can understand the concept, or the idea, behind Curves, you’ll have the ability to work though this tool with ease. Also, there are a few options available to us in this panel that I’d like to take a look at. I’ve ignored these extra tools for years, but I really shouldn’t have. They can help tremendously.

Demo Photo​

For today’s post, I’ll be using a photo of a lovely dog looking at the sky during the winter. I’ve already gone ahead and adjusted this version, but the original that I’ll be working with below is quite bland.

Curves Adjustment Layer​

To kick things off, I opened the original, non-edited, image into Photoshop. Right after that, I created a Curves adjustment layer. If you aren’t familiar with adjustment layers when it comes to Photoshop, you can either search for “Adjustment Layer” on this site or you can visit this post I linked to below.

Using the Levels Adjustment in Adobe Photoshop for Photography

This is what my workspace looks like now.

Contrast & Saturation​

You can do a lot with Curves. In today’s post, I merely want to explain how you can gain some contrast as well as some color saturation with this one tool.

As it stands, the color curve in the Properties panel is set to a 45 degree angle. If I were to lift the left side and lower the right side, I’d end up with a photo that has low contrast as well as saturation.



Now, if this is my result by making the line flatter, it only stands to reason that by making the line more steep, I’ll get an opposite effect. Let’s see what happens if I do just that.



I was correct, although the photo is now a bit over contrasted. Of course, there’s always a happy medium. To find that, I’d have to place the line back in its original position and then pull parts of it until I am happy with the outcome.

Darkening an Image​

Next, I’ll show you how to very easily darken an image using Curves. Basically, all you need to do is to pull the center of the line towards the lower right corner like so.

Lightening an Image​

And to lighten it, all I’d need to do is pull the center of the line in the opposite direction.



If I wanted to affect both the shadows and the highlights using the Curves adjustment tool, I could do so easily. I’ll click once on the lower part of the curve and drag it slightly down to darken the shadows and then I’ll click again on the upper part of the curve and drag up to lighten the highlights. This will create much more contrast in the photograph than was there originally. Check out the line now.

Curves Presets​

In all honesty, this is where most editors go wrong. While it’s very simple to make adjustments to an image using the Curves tool, one never really knows if what they did was correct or not. This is what causes the situation I described above, where people straighten the line back out and close the panel or delete the adjustment layer all together. Even as I look at my own adjustments that I just made in the demo photo, I have no idea if they are any good.

The real problem lies with having an infinite number of variations to choose from. If this adjustment was a slider, things would be much easier. Just push the slider on way or the other. On the Curves line, however, I can add a number of points and pull each point in any direction I wish. Things become rather insane quite quickly.

There is a better way to go about things. Inside the Curves Properties panel is a preset drop-down box. Take a look.



Inside this drop-down is a preset called Increase Contrast. I’ll go ahead and click that.



As you can see, Photoshop automatically added some points and pulled the curve in the directions it saw fit. From here, I like to make slight adjustments, based on what was done. At least I’ll know that I’m headed in the right direction.

The Benefit of Curves Presets​

I’ll tell you the real value in these Curves adjustment presets. If you were to click on each option, you’d see the physical change to the photo. That’s fine, but what you want to take notice of is how Photoshop decided to change the curve itself. In some cases, the application will move the end points a great distance, such as it did after I selected Negative from the preset list.



And sometimes Photoshop will add some additional lines to the curve as it did here after I selected Cross Process.



My advice is to click on each preset option and see what additional points were added and where they were positioned. This will give you a good indication of how things work inside of this tool. Once you get the hang of it, you can begin adding points of your own and dragging them across the spectrum with confidence.

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I hope I gave you some good ideas to utilize in this post about working with the Curves adjustment tool in Adobe Photoshop. If you have any questions or concerns, please leave them in the comment area below. Thanks for reading!

 

[15Katey]

Adjusting Tones with the Curves Adjustment in Adobe Photoshop​

This is going to seem like a very basic post for most of you and it probably is. If you’ve spent much time hanging around the Curves adjustment in Adobe Photoshop, you most likely know how to operate the feature when it comes to adjusting tone. Curves is great for brightening, darkening and shifting colors. With this tool, it’s so easy to lighten a dark image or darken a light one. You can increase contrast as well as check for clipped pixels. It really is the go-to tool for so many things. There’s only one problem though. It looks like a graph and because of that, many users shy away from it. I can remember my firs time using it. I didn’t exactly know how to work a “graph.” I do now though and I’m glad I took the few minutes to get the basics down. They’re much more straightforward than I ever thought.

In today’s post, I’d like to focus on one tiny sliver of the Curves adjustment tool in Photoshop. I know this is going to seem super simple, but it needs to be said. If you’ve ever applied this adjustment layer to one of your images and then jumped straight in and began clicking around in an effort to add contrast, without really knowing what you were doing, we’re going to fix that today. I’m going to show you an often overlooked attribute of this panel. Hopefully it’ll make everything clear.

Let’s take a quick look at a random image. I chose this particular photo because I thought it would display any changes I made to it via the Curves adjustment clearly.

Applying the Curves Adjustment​

For this example, I’m going to click on the Curves icon in the Adjustments panel. Doing this will add this particular adjustment layer to the Layers panel directly above the image layer.

A Closer Look at the Curve​

Let’s take a look at the histogram and associated elements inside of the Properties panel for the Curves adjustment. I think it’s best to first identify a few things before continuing on. If you keep these things in mind while working in this panel, your life will be much easier to deal with. In the screenshot below, I’ve circled the Black point and the White point on the curve.



And in this next screenshot, I outlined the output value for all of the points in the histogram. Notice how it goes from black at the bottom to white up top.



So what do these things mean? This is where it’s important to understand what I’m going to tell you. These items are the entire point of this post. If you look at the light gray histogram itself in the above screenshots, you’ll see where the tones of the image fall. The histogram looks like a slope or a hill of some sort. Along the bottom of the histogram is another line that runs from black to white. The darker tones in the image are on the left and as they get lighter, they’re displayed in the histogram on the right. If you have any experience with the histograms in your camera or in Photoshop, you probably already understand this.

Next, let’s take a look at the curve itself. The curve is the line that controls how the colors and tones appear in an image.



To demonstrate how all of this works together, I’ll run a quick experiment. If I click on the Black point on the curve and drag it up, along the output values, the blacks in the image should lighten. Let’s see if that happens.



Yup, it sure did. Now, I’ll put the Black point back where I found it. I’ll then click and drag the White point down along the other side of the histogram. The whites in the image should darken.



Okay, that turned out just as expected as well. So we now know that we can easily adjust the blacks and whites of an image simply by pulling their points along the output values of the Curves histogram. That’s very helpful to know.

Creating a Curved Curve​

What I’ve gone over so far is great, but it’s very limited. What if I wanted to lighten or darken parts of an image that aren’t completely black or white? How can I do that? Well, if I click right on part of the curve itself, a point will appear.



And then, if I click and drag that point downward, I can alter the tone of that particular area of the photo, right here on the curve. In this case, I’ll drag downward, to darken some of the shadows.



And if I do the same thing further up the curve, I can click and drag upward to lighten the highlights. I’ll end up with a very nice s-curve that adds contrast to the image.



While this seems simple enough, many new editors get confused by this. For those of you who do get confused, I want you to think of this panel as a table with a tablecloth on it. If you hold your finger down on part of the tablecloth and drag in any direction a few inches, you’ll change the entire presentation of what’s on top of the table. The same is true here. All of the tones in the entire image are connected and when you put your finger (a new point) on part of the histogram and drag, you’ll change the entire presentation of the image. The important thing to remember is that there’s a dark to light scale and two initial points; Black and White. You can move those points along the scale to adjust those two tones and you can also add more points along the interior of the curve as well to adjust some of the midtones. The possibilities are endless when it comes to tonal adjustments with the Curves adjustment feature. What’s really really important to pick up on here though is that there’s a light to dark scale involved and that you need to think about that scale when you’re making your edits.

There’s a lot more to learn about this panel and I’ve already written some about these things in previous posts. If you’d like to read some of what I’ve written, please click through below. I talk about the available presets and a host of other things.

How to Enhance Color Using Curves in Adobe Photoshop

I think I’ll leave this post here for now. I’ve achieved my goal of dissecting some of this panel and that’s all I wanted to do. If you have any questions regarding the Curves adjustment in Photoshop, please let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

 

[LukeLewis]

On-Image Adjustment Tool + Curves Adjustment in Adobe Photoshop​

The Curves adjustment is, hands down, one of the best tools you can use in Adobe Photoshop to edit contrast and the like. As opposed to the regular, more straightforward Brightness/Contrast adjustment, the Curves adjustment has the ability to fine-tune edits in a way that the other simply can’t. In the Brightness/Contrast adjustment Properties panel, all you’ve got is a slider with which to make your contrast adjustment. With the Curves adjustment, you’ve got the ability to add multiple anchor points that control many different aspects of brightness and darkness. It’s really a great tool and one I think we should all get used to using and learning about.

Take a look at it in the Properties panel. I’ve gone ahead and opened up an image in Photoshop and I applied the adjustment in question.



For now, ignore the red circle. What I want you to see is the line (curve) in the Properties panel as well as the new adjustment layer in the Layers panel.

Okay, now that we’ve got that squared away, I think I’ll tell you about the greatest issue facing those who choose to take advantage of this tool. Let’s say I want to increase the contrast of the image of the ocean that I’ve already opened in Photoshop. I added the Curves adjustment, but now what? What do I do with it? From previous experience, I know that I can click and drag the line so it forms the classic “s-curve,” but what if that doesn’t look good with this particular image? How can I make edits and enhancements that are more “exact”?

Okay, now you can look at the tool that’s contained in the red circle above. Normally, one would think that all they can do with this tool is click their mouse pointer right on the line itself and drag in the direction that suits them best. If you’re after a very customized edit though, you can click on what’s referred to as the On-Image Tool and work from there.

The On-Image Tool basically takes a measurement of whatever area of the image is clicked on and sets that anchor point automatically on the curve line in the Properties panel. So gone are the days of having to guess where to begin clicking and dragging on the line itself. Now, you can use the On-Image Tool to take the guesswork out of it all.

Let’s go through an example. This is the original image.



I’ll now activate the On-Image Tool by clicking on it in the Properties panel. Then, since I’d like to brighten the highs, I’ll click somewhere in the sky and drag upward. Let’s see what the does to the curve.



Now, since I’d like to darken some of the darker colors, I’ll again click and drag. This time though, I’ll click and drag downward to set the anchor point and to darken the area. Let’s see the curve now.



Do you see what’s happening? If you are following along, I suggest that you take a look at the curve in the Properties panel after you activate the On-Image Tool. You’ll see the anchor point floating around, depending on where you’re currently rolling over. If you’re hovering over a darker area, the anchor point will be floating on the lower portion of the curve and if you’re hovering over a brighter area, the anchor point will position itself somewhere near the upper portion of the curve. It’s pretty interesting.

I really just wanted to make you aware of this fantastic tool that’s available in Photoshop. Since adding contrast to a photograph is such a popular thing to do, I though I’d make your lives easier by demonstrating how this powerful feature works.