Cropping photos is easy, right? You start with either a horizontal or vertical photo and trim it a bit to get tighter or remove distracting elements. Of if you want to be really wild (and have enough resolution) maybe you crop in a way that transforms a portrait orientation into a landscape perspective.

Curves is a very powerful and sometimes misunderstood ingredient for processing photos, and it’s not limited to Photoshop and Lightroom. In fact, just about any image-editing application you use likely includes a Curves tool.