Some photographers are intimidated by the Curves tool at the beginning, but this is one of the essential and most versatile tools in photo editing. In this video, Denny of Denny’s Tips shows you four applications of Curves, and why it beats the other tools you can use for the same purpose.
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.
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.
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.
A quick and easy way to reduce distracting highlights, no matter how complex they are!
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This week I’m showing you a super quick and easy to way to reduce the highlights, no matter how complex they are, with a simple trick in Photoshop.
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.
How to use curves to fix any colour problem!
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I had to shoot in an environment without HSS (Didn’t have my Citi600 with me) and I didn’t have my Hoya ND16 filter with me either. Which meant that I couldn’t effectively overpower the ambient light coming off the stage to get rid of the blue on the model’s skin.
This led me to trying a few solutions, albeit badly until Stefan Kohler hooked me up with this ridiculously simple and awesome solution for fixing colour problems while retaining all of the micro details in contrast etc (which you lose when you use Frequency Separation for low level skin etc).
The Relations Between Curves, Color And Magic
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In order to understand curves we need to understand color in the way that Photoshop does. This is called Additive color theory
EVERYTHING in an image is made of 3 colors – RED – GREEN – BLUE
Curves Adjustments Layers 101 (With 10 Examples)
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A few days ago, we posted that little fun game about curves. You should go and try it now! Some people really struggled with this one, so I thought it might be a good idea to explain this here. you can consider this a curves crash course.
Curves. For some it’s just a big mystery, for others it’s daily routine. For those of the first category, here’s a little crash course. You can probably consider this a Curves Adjustments Layers 101. Just make sure you understand each of the workflows I explain.
How Good Are You With Curves?
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Curves are somewhat of a panacea when it comes to Photoshop adjustment layers. With curves you can do pretty much anything you can do with the other adjustment layers: contrast, color correction, apply looks… One could argue that you can virtually eliminate all other Photoshop features, as long as keep curves and masks.
Of course, you would need to understand curves and one way to understand them is to try and read a curve chart and understand its implications on an image. Of course, this is fairly easy when you are only adding a bit of contrast or luminescence, but once you start using it for color, it is a whole different ballgame. But its worth it: the better you are in reverse engineering Curves, the more you know what you can (and want) to get out of them. Plus you would instantly know how ot apply a certain look (or how a look was applied)
This is why we made a few examples, and put together a small, fun, but definitely not simple quiz. If you end with a 100% score, you will be rewarded with standing ovations and bragging rights. And trust me, if you end up with a high score you WANT to brag, chances are non of your friends will make a perfect score… (we tried to make it not so hard to where you would need a calibrated monitor, if you get curves, you should be able to do it)
If you have absolutely no clue what those curves thingies are, then stop here and let us know in the comments, we will make a curves 101 tutorial for you, and a super-deep tutorial. Hit the jump if you think you have what it takes.
