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If you’re confused by curve and levels in Photoshop you need to watch this beginner’s guide

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Two of the most commonly used adjustment layers within Photoshop are arguably the Curves and Levels adjustment layers. But if you’re new to Photoshop and you’ve never used them before, you might feel a little intimidated by them. Or perhaps you’re used to the basics of them, but don’t really understand their full power.

In this video, Aaron Nace at Phlearn walks us through the basics of how they work, the differences between the two, and how we can use them effectively in Photoshop to adjust the contrast, brightness or even colour of our photographs.

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How to quickly match colours for fast composites in Photoshop

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One of the things many people struggle with when it comes to composites is matching the colours of the two (or more) shots. Manually dragging sliders around and trying to match two completely different images is just plain tricky, especially if you don’t have a lot of experience with it.

But this tip from photographer and digital artist, Dustin Valkema shows how we can very quickly match up two or more images together for compositing using a simple curves adjustment and a little known option it offers in the “auto” settings.

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You think you know Curves? This quiz will tell you how well you understand them

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Curves are one of the most powerful and versatile tools in Photoshop. They can even replace several other tools since you can use them for split toning, or adjusting contrast, exposure, and white balance. But how well do you understand this tool? Can you read the curve chart and figure out how it affects an image? Retouching Toolkit has a fun quiz for you which will tell you how well you understand Curves. Let’s see how you score!

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13 tips for working with Photoshop curves in 2 minutes

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Curves are one of the most valuable and powerful tools contained within Photoshop. Many of us have been using them for years. But do we know all of the tricks when it comes to working with them? Probably not.

This short video from Julieanne Kost at Adobe shows us 13 quick tips for working with Photoshop’s Curves in just two minutes. The tips cover a range of slightly less common techniques, including working with multiple curves simultaneously and making adjustments from the image canvas itself.

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This is the quickest way to color correct a photo in Photoshop

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There are several ways to color correct your images in Photoshop and Lightroom. In this video, Jesús Ramirez of Photoshop Training Channel gives you a tip that will speed up this process significantly. He teaches you how to set Photoshop’s algorithms in only a few seconds, so you can change the white balance in a single click next time you need it.

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How to reverse engineer colour grades in Photoshop and reproduce them with curves

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Colour grading is such a complicated and in-depth topic. Sure, you can cheat and buy some preset pack from somewhere, but you gain so much more when you learn to understand colour and its nuances. Then you can create your own grades and get them just the way you want.

That’s the point of the Look Creation & Color Grading series from RAWexchange. The whole course is four hours of video training that covers digital colour theory and principles in both Capture One and Photoshop. It’s a paid course, but there is also this free bonus videos, which shows us how we can analyse and reverse engineer a colour grade, and then apply it to other images using curves adjustments.

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The difference between Levels and Curves in Photoshop

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You can adjust the tonality of the photos using either Levels or Curves. But how to know which to use? And what are the differences anyway? Unmesh Dinda a.k.a. PiXimperfect shares a video about the differences between these two tools. He uses an interesting analogy, comparing them with different types of calculators. So if you’re wondering what exactly makes Levels and Curves different, this video should make it easier to understand.

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Is Darkroom the ultimate mobile toning solution?

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As life is quickly becoming busier and busier for me I’ve had to find solutions to be able to work on the go and with that, naturally comes sacrifice.

I opted for a Surface Pro 4 and an iPhone 6sPlus for my “Travel kit” and with the Wi-Fi abilities of the Sony A7ii it makes for a versatile set of tools that can cover a range of operating systems / platforms and quickly allow me to output some high quality material.

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