Curves

[leoDaw]

Hi folks...

I´m trying to create some curve effects... but I didn´t like.

How is the best process?

See yah

[dave milbut]

a guy posted this link the other day that looks promising. I haven't had a chance to work through it yet, but it looks like a good tut:

<http://www.gurusnetwork.com/tutorials/photoshop/curves1.html>

[Emma d'Anise]

I agree with Phosphor, what is it you're calling a "curve effect?" There are a good many things you can do with Curves in PS, and it strikes me that you might actually be referring to drawing arcs. So what is it you're trying to acheive?

~Em

[testpilot]

Dave is there a tutorial expands on this one(Curves)?
I'd like to learn more about color correction by the numbers.
EXCELLENT!!!
Thanks!!!

[testpilot]

Dave,
It's the best curves tutorial I've seen.
The author Steve Nelson, sorta implies that there's a follow-up. At least I'm hoping.
I am an advance newbie. It's probably old news to you.

[Warren S. Sarle]

Read "Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction", 4th ed., by Dan Margulis. Outstanding book on the use of curves, channels, etc.

[Thee_DarkOverLord]

bookmarked*




Ditto

[Stroker]

Steve is a good guy. Smart, too.
He is a U2U lurker, but he's a Mac-head, so he probably hardly ever pokes his head in over here.

Steve's Curves tutorial rocks! Once I understood how Curves work, I never looked back at Brightness/Contrast and hardly ever use Levels. Seems like Curves have a place almost everything PS that I do.

I highly doubt Steve is going to write a follow-up tutorial. The last time I talked to him about it, I got the impression that his Curves tutorial was meant as a springboard for your own discoveries into the depths of Curves.

Here are a few key combo tips when using Curves:


Shift + click "locks" down the points. I guess you could call it multi-select.
You can move a bunch of anchors at the same time.

Ctrl + click = delete. No more dragging them off the playing field. Anchor
be gone!

Alt + click changes the grid. Pretty nice. Too bad you can't customize
the background (that would have made making my zcurves a lot easier).
:sigh:

Using various combos + click didn't seem to do anything special.

Clicking in the target picture with various combos of shift/alt/ctrl does
EyeDropper/Colour Picker things. Major spiffy.

Dan Margulis wrote an article about colour correction by the numbers. You can find it at Professsional Adobe PhotoShop Articles by Dan Margulis <http://www.ledet.com/margulis/articles.html>. It's Chapter 2: By the Numbers. He uses CMYK, but the ideas still apply. Also, it's in PDF format.

That's about enough out of me.

[Bill Lamp]

I use use the levels to adjust the end points as I need to keep deep shadow and bright area detail. The histogram with that is a big help. The "tails" are important.

* note to Adobe: A resizeable window for the LEVELS tool would be a help*

But I have struggled to being able to do most of the other adjustments with curves.

And yes, I scan and do as much as possible in wide gamot colour spaces for the same reason. The Epson 2200 can make use of them.

Bill