Master Curves from Start to Finish in Photoshop

today we gonna completely understand curves and by the end of the video I guarantee that most of you will fall in love with this tool now when it comes to curves there are two ways of applying it one as an adjustment then two as an adjustment so you can go ahead and create an adjustment layer by clicking on the adjustment layer button and then choosing curves this creates a curves adjustment layer now any changes you make over here can be changed for example you made this change okay you want to change it you double click

over here on the symbol and you can change it any time you can reduce the opacity you can do a lot of stuff you can change the blend modes right and you can move the layer you can just turn it off turn it on there's so much more flexibility with it you can create a clipping mask right so let's go ahead and delete it select the curves adjustment layer press the Delete key to delete it now the other way is going to image adjustment and then curves or ctrl or command M that's the shortcut now

you can do any changes you want for example I increase the contrast and then I hit OK now what it's doing is its burning the effect to the pixel suits burning everything down to pixels there's no going back for example I wanted to change the curves I cannot do that but of course you can go ahead and do this let's go back you can right click on the background layer and convert it to smart object and then many go ahead and apply curves go to image adjustments and then curves and when you make a change

here and hit OK this applies as a smart filter of course you can go ahead double click on it and change it any time you wish but in my opinion adjustment layers are much more flexible there's so much more you can do with it especially on composites also for exhaust vent layers you can apply an adjustment layer and it applies to all the layers beneath it all right so we're gonna go there just went clear route so let's delete this smart filter let's go back ok right so let's create a curves adjustment layer by clicking

on the adjustment layer icon and then choosing curves now curves are very simple all we have to understand is one extremely simple statement let's have a look at the curves the right side represents the bright pixels and the left side represents the dark pixels listen to it very carefully the right side represents the bright pixels the left side represents the dark pixels going up makes it brighter or ads going down makes it darker or subtract again right side bright left side dark going up makes it brighter or ads going down makes it darker or subtracts

easy so for example you want to make the bright pixels brighter so I would make a point on the right-hand side so this is the right-hand side what is the corresponding area on the line this one so I will make a point over them you want to make the bright pixels brighter so you would take it up right up makes it brighter down makes it darker take it up easy very easy and you want to make the dark pixels darker so where are the darks darks are on the left-hand side so click a point on

the left-hand side you want to make it darker you would take it down so take it down just like this and this is the classic s-curve and that's what contrast is right contrast is making the brights brighter and the darks taka so let's have a look at the before and after so this the before this is the after very simple now let me show you one more example now when it comes to curves if you want to reset the curse all you have to do click on this button right over there click on it it

resets it now let's say you want to brighten up the dark pixels without disturbing the bright pixels so I would click a point on the left just like so and I would brighten up the dark pixels but it also brightens up the bright pixels as you can see look at the line over there in this area as well the line is up so you would click a point over there bring it back just to the diagonal that's it that way only dark pixels are brightened now let me show you one more trick have a look

at this button if you click and hold if you press and hold this button this shows you before curse if you release it it's after curves now the curves has three more channels red green and blue and before we head over to the channels keep in mind the opposites are G B is the opposite of see my red is the opposite of cyan Green is the opposite of magenta and blue is the opposite of yellow just keep that in mind let's move on to the red channel so click on the drop-down list over here and

let's go ahead and choose red the same theory applies here for example you want to add red in the highlights so you would click a point on the right hand side because right represents the bright left dark so make a point now you want to add red right for addition we go up for subtraction we go down so you would take it up now you want to subtract red from the dark areas click a point on the left hand side you take it down now when you do that have a look it adds cyan to

it it appears as if cyan is being added because red is being subtracted and red is the opposite of cyan let me show you one more example if I go to blue and suppose I want to add yellow in the highlights okay yellow in the extreme highlights so I would take down the blue because blue is the opposite of yellow so the extreme highlight is on the right-hand side right for the highlights and left for the shadows so I will just take it down so decreasing the blues would make yellow show up have a look

at it it's absolutely jaundice right now okay it's pretty cool right let's reset it and for this image I'm gonna do a simple edit for example I'm gonna make the brights a little brighter just like that I'm gonna make the darks a little darker and the way we do the faded effect if we make the extreme dark areas completely black areas a little lighter and we just take the extreme left a little up to create a faded effect and for example you want to add blue to the shadows we go to the blue channel and

then take up the Blues on the extreme shadows maybe let's take down the Blues and the highlights to add yellow to it so very simple effect extremely simple to do and that's it for the curves now all that being said do you want to go a little more deeper advanced let's do it now you might ask hey image how can you be so sure about the left representing the darks and the right representing the brights well all you have to do is to look at the bar not that one this bar let's zoom into the

curves have a look at this bar on the left hand side what does it have black and as it goes to the right hand side it becomes brighter and brighter and eventually white similarly happens with this vertical axis now keep in mind these are scaled from 0 to 255 so here you have 0 here you have 128 and here you have 255 with 0 being absolutely dark completely black 128 being 50% gray and 255 absolutely white okay similarly on this vertical axis or the y axis 0 is making 100% black and 255 is making 100%

white so for example you want to make the mid-tones 100% white I don't know why you would do that you can click a point in the middle you can take it all the way up to 255 have a look the mid-tones are completely white all right let's reset it now why did I teach you about scaling from 0 to 255 there was a reason behind it and that is input and output so this access that you see this horizontal axis x axis is the input axis and this vertical axis or the y axis is the

output axis so 0 to 255 in RGB channel think of them as brightness values 0 absolutely black 128 50% gray and 255 hundred percent white so for example you want to sell the pixels with a brightness value of let's say 128 so you would click a point over here and set the input to 128 128 now you want to make the pixels with a brightness value of 128 do let's say 160 so you would set the output to 160 so this has become frightened so what it's basically doing is it's taking the pixels with a

brightness value of 128 and increasing their value to 160 so grabbing the 128 pixels increasing their value to 160 so that is what input and output is so this one is the input axis and the vertical axis is the output axis so that's why we chose 128 value and we made it 160 because here this one is 128 and this one is 160 I hope that makes sense to you similarly we can make multiple points for example I made a point over here we chose 54th bright pixel and we can just decrease the amount to

let's say 30 so we chose the pixels with a brightness value of 54 and reduced their value to 30 so what does this all teach us input is which pixels you want to modify and the output is how you want to modify them right so I want to modify pixels with a value of let's say 160 for brightness value and how you want to modify them that's the output look at this axis I want to make it brighter I want to make 163 valley pixels 197 that is the output and this is the output axis

now one of the most intelligent questions that I've been asked about the curves is this on mesh why is this line diagonal why is it not horizontal why is it not vertical what makes a diagonal great question so glad you asked let's zoom in and have a look at this so let's have a look at the extreme left so what does the extreme left represent 100% black right absolute darkness now taking up makes it brighter taking down makes it darker but here's the problem you cannot make anything which is 100% black blacker right you cannot

make anything which is absolute dark darker and that's why you hit a wall so we can make it brighter we can make the darks brighter but we cannot make the darkest darker it's just not possible so that's why it is down here on the left-hand side at the bottom it hits a wall this is the kind of the surface that it hits now have a look at the extreme right inside so what does this represent 100% white or absolute brightness you cannot make anything which is absolutely white wider right so that's why you hit the

roof on the right-hand side so on the right-hand side you hit the roof on the left-hand side you hit the bottom or the surface and that makes the line diagonal now let's have a look at some real-world applications of curse and along the way we will also learn some great features inside of it so let's have a look at this composite so this was this originally and then I removed the sky I'm so sorry about that and then I added this lady as you can see the colors are not matching so we can use curves

to match elements of a composite so to do that all you need to do is to create a curves adjustment layer click on the adjustment layer icon and then choose curves now if you make any change right over here it changes the background as well as the subject you want to make sure that it's limited just to the subject so you can click on this button this is create clipping mask button it limits it just the subject all right so now let me just rename it the subject so that it's more clearer to you let's

move back to the properties and anytime you want to open the properties of any adjustment layer just click on this symbol and it will be right there every adjustment layer has its own symbol so let's zoom in and move it this way now let's reset it click on the reset button now as you can see the darks are not as dark as the background but we can make them right so let's make the darks a little darker I'm going to move this slider to the right is this getting you confused what is this slide are

doing have a look at the input output it will all make sense so the input is 20 as we move the slider the input value increases and the output value stays 0 which means that if I increase it to this amount all the pixels of brightness level 26 and similar pixels nearby are selected and their value is reduced to 0 so pixels with a brightness value of 26 have been reduced to the brightness value of 0 okay so let's take the slider a little bit to the right just like so and maybe if you want

to make it a little darker you want to take it a little down just a touch alright now let's zoom out have a look at it before and after as you can see let's move the curves to the left hand side it's already matching a lot and you can click and hold on this button to have a look before the curves you can release it after the curves already it's matching a lot let's move on to the other channels let's move on to the red channel click on the drop down and let's select red zoom

into the image and have a look at the highlights first so as you can see in the highlights there's a turn of red and we want to reduce it so click on the right hand side let's reduce it so it looks great but have a look the shadows over here there's too much cyan and we want to add red to the shadows so we will click and take it up until it looks normal so for me this looks fine it's great now let's move on to the green Channel I guess there's too much green let's

fit it to the screen let's try to decrease green a little bit just a touch ok let's move on to the blue channel as you can see in the shadows again there's a tiny bit of blue so we can reduce blue in the shadows so click and drag it down but what it's doing is it's also reducing Blues in the highlights does making it yellow so we would click a point at the highlights we would take it to normal and now I want you to have a look at this so here is the before not

matching at all and have a look at the after absolutely matching easy right now if this is confusing let's make it more easier for you let's reset it click on the reset button ok now all you need to use is the hand tool right over there have a look here the hand do just click on that if you don't know where the highlight is what are the shadows if you're getting confused where to click all you need to do is this so as you can see the shadows are bright up so you would just click

and drag it down to make it darker easy done great you don't even have to look here just look in the image and visually do it let's move on to the red channel there's too much red in the highlights so I know this is the highlight I know the skin is going to read in the highlights so I would just click on in here and drag it down just like so and shadows are becoming too cyan ish so I'll just click on the shadows and drag it up just like so very easy to do similarly

we'll go to the green channel generally I see a lot of greens so I'll just click and drag it down and then I'll go to the blue channel for example there's too much Blues in the shadow so just click and drag it down and decreasing the Blues is making the highlights yellowish so we will go to the highlights and just keep it normal wasn't this easier you can also use curves to stylize your images and make them pop let's have a look at this example so if you go ahead and create a curves adjustment layer

let me show you one more feature in this case let's stick it in here okay have a look at this this is the histogram inside the curve in other words it shows you how many pixels there is in each region as you can see in the mid-tones we have a turn of pixels and on the highlights we don't have so many pixels not even in the shadows so this picture is a little bit mid-tone oriented so as we move from left to right for this brightness level we have this many pixels let me just zoom

it in for you for this brightness level we have this many pixels for this brightness level we have this many for the mid-tones we have so much of pixels and then it goes down it's just like a graph to expand the range and make your images pop you can easily use this trick let's zoom in let me show you something interesting have a look beyond this point there are no pixels at this brightness level there is no rise which means there are no pixels brighter than this okay also beyond this point there are very less

pixels so there are no pixels darker than this so what if we make the brightest pixel in this image absolutely white and what if we make the darkest pixel in this image absolutely dark wouldn't that make the image pop so that's an artistic choice we can easily do that without losing the details by holding the Alt key or the option key and as you move the slider just the point where you begin to see the artifacts it means that you're losing details in those areas have a look at the red areas if I'm move beyond

this those are the areas where we are losing details so stop at just the point where you begin to see those so I'm gonna stop right there okay and similarly on the left-hand side I'm gonna stop right there okay let's have a look at it before and after so this is the before this is the after just a tiny bit of pop now we can move to other channels as well to add some color to it for example you want to add yellow in the highlights so we would go to blue because blue is the

opposite of yellow and decrease the blues and the extreme highlights can do that very easily and increase the Blues in the shadows just a tiny bit of it this is kind of too much okay this is exciting now let's move to greens you want a little bit of magenta in the darks so we'll just add it a little bit and we'll take it up in the highlights now let's move on to Red's let's try decreasing Reds in the shadows and increasing Reds in the highlights or the mid-tones a little bit have a look the skin

is looking so nice warm this is amazing now let's move back to RGB and let's try to take it a little bit more to the left you're losing details we better not do that let's make a point over here and let's make it a little brighter and we want to make these areas a little talker so we can use the hand tool and see where those points lie so I'm gonna click and drag it down you can adjust it over here later have a look at this just a tiny bit of edit so this is

the before a different kind of flat look and this is the after with a little bit of pop you can also decrease the opacity if you think it's too much so I'm gonna go ahead with an opacity of let's say 59 is fine for this one now there are tons of other uses of curves all you need to do is to go to pics imperfect YouTube channel in the search bar type in curves you will find tons of videos on how to apply curves in different scenarios the applications are limitless speed compositing color grading color

correction check layers and whatnot I hope this video helped you and I hope you get to explore curves a little more I hope you apply this in your workflow I hope this makes a difference for you and if it does make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you might friend don't miss any other future tip trick or tutorial I would like to take this moment to thank all these nice and amazing people for supporting fix and perfect on patreon and helping

keep pigs in perfect free for everybody forever thank you so much for all your support thank you for watching I'll see you guys in my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] you [Music]