Lesson Info
32. Adjusting Curves
Lessons
Class Introduction
00:52 2Introducing Photoshop
02:37 3The Class Materials
01:36 4How To Open Files
01:42 5Using The Home Screen
02:35 6Exploring The Interface
03:30 7Getting Additional Help
01:36 8Understanding Workspaces
05:11Tools and The Options Bar
03:50 10Why You Should Use a Tablet
04:31 11Finding Hidden Tools
04:23 12How to See What You’re Working On
08:12 13Selecting Things
08:01 14More Selection Tools
12:25 15Testing the Magic Wand and Quick Selection Tools
07:25 16The History Palette – Undoing Things
05:24 17Resolution and Bit Depth
07:03 18Photoshop Preferences
01:31 19Menu and Item Shortcut Keys
02:39 20Non-Destructive Editing
02:57 21Working with Layers
12:19 22Groovy 3 Exercise
11:43 23Layer Effects and Styles
05:38 24Layer Masks – Karen on Beans
08:33 25Using Adjustment Layers
05:38 26Martian Karen
03:37 27Advanced Compositing Using Layers
08:43 28Non-Destructive Editing Techniques
05:22 29Understanding Smart Objects
07:28 30Smart Sharpen
06:42 31Understanding Histogram
06:24 32Adjusting Curves
03:48 33The Healing Brush Tools
10:26 34The Clone Stamp Tool
07:47 35The Burn and Dodge Tools
05:55 36Understanding RAW Files
01:44 37Adobe Camera Raw
04:18 38XMP Sidecar Files
02:14 39Camera Raw: Edit
12:24 40Camera Raw: Crop & Rotate
03:13 41Camera Raw: Spot Removal
04:56 42Camera Raw: Adjustment Brush
08:17 43Camera Raw: Graduated Filter
05:40 44Camera Raw: Radial Filter
05:11 45Camera Raw: Red-Eye Removal
02:04 46Camera Raw: Snapshots and Presets
09:39 47Neural Filters
10:09 48Portrait Retouching Session
36:53 49Scenic Retouching Session
11:25Lesson Info
Adjusting Curves
we've changed our history Graham or our exposure values using the levels dialog box. But what if we want a little bit more control? Well we can use curves and so let's dive into Photoshop. I've opened wanna dot jpeg that's an image we're very familiar with and so let's use some curves to make adjustments on this image. The first thing I'm gonna do as always, is to take this background layer and unlock it so we can manipulate that. Then I'm gonna go down here and make an adjustment layer and I'm gonna choose choose curves and of course curves just like levels gives you a hissed a gram. Now this hissed a gram matches our image. We have a ton of dark pixels on this history Graham here is showing us that we have tons of dark, that's this background wanda's hair. Most of the image is in the dark areas, we have a little bit of mid tones, that's her skin and then some light areas and that is her shirt but not a lot. And so what we can do is we can adjust some things. So let's say that we want...
these dark tones to be a little bit brighter. So what we can do is we can choose a point on the hist, a gram. So right about here and then we can increase that. So what we're saying is we're going to take this input so that's this level right here And so from right to left that's the input level. So we're saying right around here at 60. So those are dark tones, we want to increase their luminosity, we want to make them brighter by bringing this up. So I'm just clicking and dragging so that's pretty good. But you'll notice that we have this curve this line here. So when I add this point I'm bringing up these levels but it's also bringing up all of the levels behind it and above it in this nice gentle curve. But what if I want to change something? So I think that the skin tones here there now too bright. When I change the dark tones, I change the bright tones and I only want to change the dark tones. So what I can do is up here, I've got this little tool, it's a little click and drag scrubby tool. It's like a little finger moving back and forth. I can go over here and say where is this this value and see I've got a little dot on my screen so it puts a dot over here, it's saying this is the value that I want to choose. So I click on that and then I can go over here and I can say you know what, take those values down? Just a bit so it's very, very subtle but I've made the dark tones a little bit brighter and I have restored the bright tones. I might want to say you know what, there's some really dark tones over here. Where are they? Oh they're right about here so I can drag that down a little bit and I can start adding points to this. And so instead of the levels dialog box where I had something to adjust the absolute white and the absolute black and then drag the mid tones between that with curves. I can make adjustments all along the history graham and change those values back and forth. It's a really powerful tool and not only can you do all of the values here on across all the colors but you can go into individual colors. So maybe you say you know what? There's too much blue in the shadows so I can go in here and drag this down and take some of that blew out. It's very subtle but you notice that we just color corrected the image by going into one color channel and dragging those values down. Or maybe I wanted to be color corrected to look a little bit blue in those values. I can do that. I can say I want blue in the darks but not in the brights and making a nice curve there to do all kinds of things. Curves are really powerful things. So it's a great tool that you can use to do all kinds of effects to your image.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Katie
Mark did a great job at explaining things and going over them multiple times throughout the lessons. My only issue was that sometimes it went a little faster than I could keep up and I needed to rewind it a bit and start again. But from someone who has never worked in photoshop before I 100% recommend this class to anyone trying to learn.
Terri Schwartz
Student Work
Related Classes
Adobe Photoshop