These 6 Curves Tricks Will Totally Transform Your Photos (VIDEO)
Photoshop’s easy-to-use Curves tools are beginner-friendly and very effective for perfecting exposure, color grading, and much more. Today’s very helpful primer reveals six special Curves tricks that will transform your images in minutes.
The beginners guide below comes to us from Photoshop Together, a new photocentric YouTube channel that’s devoted to simple image-editing techniques for inexperienced shooters. As our instructor says, “Curves is an extremely powerful tool in Photoshop, but many people haven’t explored its full potential.”
He then demonstrates how you can employ this oft-ignored tool to “fix everything” from dull light to weak colors and contrast. You’ll even pick up tips for employing Curves adjustments to create unique eye-catching effects. Once you master what you’ll learn in the next four minutes you’ll be well-prepared to take a deeper dive into everything the Curves tool can accomplish.
Tip number one involves using Photoshop’s Color Cast Removal Curve to rehabilitate images with an inaccurate balance of tones. As you’ll see this one is as simple as moving both ends of the Curve to the sides of the histogram.
Next on the list is the Highlights and Shadows Curve. This time you’ll add anchor points to the Curve so you can move the upper point to quickly adjust highlights while leaving dark areas unaffected. Then use the lower anchor point to selectively adjust shadows without biasing your previous enhancement.
Our instructor moves on to what he refers to as the “film curve”—an enhancement that’s actually accomplished within the Brightness Curve panel. The sequence begins by lifting the dark point and lowering the bright point. Then you’ll apply an S-shaped curve to bring back contrast and create an image with a film-like look.
At this point you’re barely halfway through the lesson and there are three more tricks to learn, all of which are just as fast and effective as those mentioned above. One you’re done watching head over to the instructional Photoshop Together YouTube channel where there’s much more to learn about increasing your post-processing skills.
And speaking of timesaving editing tricks, don’t miss another beginner-friendly tutorial we featured yesterday that demonstrates how Photoshop’s long-awaited AI Spot Removal feature saves you tons of time by automatically eliminating image-killing distractions with precision.
