Curves Tutorial
Today I'm going to show you how unscary curves are. Note that I'm using CS4 so don't get thrown off if it doesn't look exactly the same. CURVES ARE CURVES.
There is probably a proper way to do it. My way is "does it look okay? good. No? try again."
Okay, so. How to get from
to
with one tool.
Everyone know where to find curves in Photoshop?
It would behoove you greatly to make it a layer adjustment, and not to edit directly on the image.
This is what the starting point for RGB curves looks like:
Up and left is light, down and right is dark.
Here's how you blow out an image:
And how you make one really dark:
We want something in between. So the image is too dark, so we start to nudge it up and left. HERE'S A HINT: If you're nudging and you want to nudge it further, you have to click on the dot. If you don't, the curve will act in a way you weren't expecting.
So, I ended up having to nudge this one a lot. It was really dark.
And then, it seemed a bit ruddy to me, so I went into the Red channel in curves and dropped it just slightly.
Et voilà!
Basically, just play. Sometimes it's worth it to hit the Auto button to see how the curves work, though I would never, ever suggest using what the auto says is right. Because it never is. Just work with it and get a feel for it and play around!
There is probably a proper way to do it. My way is "does it look okay? good. No? try again."
Okay, so. How to get from
to
with one tool.
Everyone know where to find curves in Photoshop?
It would behoove you greatly to make it a layer adjustment, and not to edit directly on the image.
This is what the starting point for RGB curves looks like:
Up and left is light, down and right is dark.
Here's how you blow out an image:
And how you make one really dark:
We want something in between. So the image is too dark, so we start to nudge it up and left. HERE'S A HINT: If you're nudging and you want to nudge it further, you have to click on the dot. If you don't, the curve will act in a way you weren't expecting.
So, I ended up having to nudge this one a lot. It was really dark.
And then, it seemed a bit ruddy to me, so I went into the Red channel in curves and dropped it just slightly.
Et voilà!
Basically, just play. Sometimes it's worth it to hit the Auto button to see how the curves work, though I would never, ever suggest using what the auto says is right. Because it never is. Just work with it and get a feel for it and play around!