Adobe Photoshop CS5 Tutorials
Color Correcting Photos / Introducing Curves pt. 1
Visitors to VTC.com will be able to view all introductory videos for each training course.
Free Trial Members will gain access to first three chapters for each training course.
Full Access Members have full access to VTC.com�s entire library of video tutorials.
Learn More
Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Photoshop CS5 / Color Correcting Photos / Introducing Curves pt. 1)
OK, you're getting comfortable working with histograms, reading histograms and of course working with the Levels Dialog Box as well. Well, I hope you're getting comfortable with them anyway. I want to bring it up another notch here on the level of complexity. I want to show you another color correction command here inside Photoshop. He's my personal favorite. He's called Curves and really curves functions in a very similar way to levels. It's just a different interface but it's almost like a, it's like a high-powered version of levels if you will. So let's go and check this guy out. I'm going to head to my Image Menu of course and then down to Adjustments and then I'll look for Curves or of course you could hit the keyboard shortcut Command M or Control M if you're on the Windows side there and that'll bring me into your Curves. Alright, now as before, the initial look at the dialog box, maybe it's a little bit shocking. There's kind of a lot going on here and it might look kind of complex but here's the deal. We still have our histogram inside the main area here and in terms of curves functioning in a similar way to levels, it really does. Down in the bottom-left corner there's our black slider and then way over towards the right, there's our white slider. So how this works is there's our luminance scale from zero to 255, all the way across the bottom here but then curves adds in this extra dimension. We have a second luminance scale which runs vertically from zero at the bottom all the way up to 255 all the way up at the top there. So we have both a vertical access and a horizontal access. Now, I'll talk about the vertical access in just a little while. I want to talk about the horizontal access first here. Now, in terms of using curves to set the black point and the white point for your image, really it's exactly the same as it was in the Levels Dialog Box. We'll just move this dialog out of the way a little bit and of course what I would do is I would start with my black point and I would drag him over into the histogram, into the foothills of the histogram just like you and I did beforeright? And of course, just like we saw in the Levels Dialog Box, any pixels, any luminance values from this point on the histogram all the way to the left now become mapped to black. The same holds true for white. I could drag this guy into the histogram, into the foothills of the histogram anyway from the right-hand side and now I'm clipping all of these pixels to pure white. And then of course, everything in between, all of midtones simply reshuffle and get reorganized. So it's really the same idea here. Now, previously in the Levels Dialog Box we had numeric inputs. We had those text fields that we could put values into and we have those same values here in Curves. It just works a little bit differently. If I click on my Black Arrow down at the bottom of the histogram, I now have an input field down at the bottom and mine's currently set to 63. Recall back in the Levels Dialog Box, we had a black point of 60right? And then I could go over and click on the white point, the White Arrow and of course I could go and type in some kind of an input value there as well. Maybe 225 or something like this, right? It's exactly the same. You just have to make sure that you click on the appropriate slider. That's really all there is to it, right? OK, what else can we do with Curves? Well, what I'll do is I'll pull my dialog back on screen here and I'll give it the good old Option or Alt Reset. So I'll reset my dialog box back to where you and I started and don't forget, again, just like Curves, right now I'm editing or I'm color correcting my composite image so what I could do is I could drop down the Channel Drop-Down Menu at the top and then isolate my reds, isolate the greens and of course isolate the blues inside my RGB image, right? You could certainly do that if you want or you can use your Auto Option once again. Again, we have this Auto setting here over on the right-hand side and that's going to automatically adjust each channel's luminance curve, if that makes sense. I'm just going to reset this guy one more time by Option or Alt clicking there. Now, the other thing that we can do is we can also set the black point and the white point manually if we wish simply by using our Eyedropper Tools. So I can grab my Black Eyedropper here and once again I can go and find what I think is the darkest area on my image. Again, maybe I could go after these sort of the shadows there in the tree trunks or maybe over towards the side here. I even see some dark branches there over on the far left side. Really, wherever you want there. Hit that up and then same thing with your white point. Grab the White Eyedropper there inside the Curves Dialog Box and then hit your light point, your white spot there. There, something like that. So that's not too bad but of course there's a few other things that I want to show you with your curves as well. At this point I haven't shown you anything unique about curves. So far everything that we've done we can also do inside the Levels Dialog Boxright? So what I'm going to do is once again, I'm going to go ahead and reset my dialog box and then I'll show you a couple of other neat tricks that you can do with Curves that aren't possible with any of our other color correction tools in Photoshop.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Adobe Photoshop CS5 |
| Author: | Geoff Blake |
| SKU: | 34150 |
| ISBN: | 1-936334-46-1 |
| Release Date: | 2010-08-06 |
| Duration: | 7.5 hrs / 95 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
VTC Sign up & Benefits
- Unlimited Access
- 81,350 Video Tutorials (14,200 free)
- Video Available as Flash or QuickTime
- Over 715 Courses
- $30 for One Month Access
- Multi-User Discounts Available
