Beginner's Guide to Using Curves in Luminar Neo

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[@pwright57]

Thanks Jim. Another very helpful video. Can't wait for retirement and more time to explore the seemingly endless options of Neo.

[@JimNix]

thank you for watching Paul!

[@RonaldBrown59]

I though I had a pretty good idea of how to use the Curves tool, but I always learn something new when watching your video’s. Great video, thanks for sharing Jim.

[@JimNix]

thank you for watching Ron, I appreciate it and glad you found something of use here!

[@hankwojo]

I used to avoid this like the plague. I think I'm going to dive in and play around a little.

[@JimNix]

Have fun Henry! 😀

[@jean-francoisdamon4847]

merci Jim pour cet excellent court sur le travail avec les courbes,un grand plus pour corriger ses photos😉

[@JimNix]

thank you so much for watching Jean-Francois and I hope all is well!

[@deyelaw4809]

I have played with curves but always found that the results were too drastic.I did not realise how to properly utilise the anchor points to give so much control. Thank you Jim! Now I have some editing to improve!

[@JimNix]

awesome, glad to hear this has helped, thanks for watching!

[@jer3006]

Thanks to your newsletter I watched this Curves video and benefitted greatly from it. It's not that I don't use Curves, it's just I can't remember all the depth of the feature. So your video refreshes my memory and then adds a little extra. Such as relating the main histogram to the Curves bkgd histogram. Thank you!

[@JimNix]

Awesome, glad it helps Jer and thanks so much for watching, and for reading my newsletter! Hope all is well!

[@user-qz3mg5rr5q]

Great tutorial. I learned a lot in only 15 minutes.

[@JimNix]

Awesome, thanks for watching!

[@gregorychard]

G'day Jim Bravo on an excellent run-down on the working of the curve tool. I can remember about 30ish years ago on a very early edition of Photoshop, I was also using the curve tool as my only editing tool. I used the eyedropper to check the highlights and shadows. I made sure that I had at least 5% in the lightest areas and no more than 97% in the shadows. Times have changed rapidly from then to now in the editing programmes. Greg

[@JimNix]

hi Greg and thanks, and yeah I bet you have seen a lot of change since then! It's changed a lot just in the last couple of years with new AI tools et

[@CleverPhotographer]

Excellent as always 🎉

[@JimNix]

ha thanks Jakub!

[@davidchandler4788]

Thanks Jim. This helped me a lot. A lot more to curves than I thought

[@JimNix]

thanks for watching Dave!

[@habigscrapbooks]

Super helpful. Thanks for making this more understandable.

[@JimNix]

thank you for watching!

[@ericwalter6334]

Hi Jim have avoided curves as they seemed complicated and I did not understand their power, great tutorial thank you.

[@JimNix]

thanks for watching Eric and I hope it helps!

[@davidbloom2968]

Thanks Jim. You just added SO much to my usage of the curves. Appreciate all of your good work!

[@JimNix]

Awesome, glad that I could help David!

[@frankbelt633]

Very helpful. Cleared up some confusion. Thanks

[@JimNix]

Thanks for watching Frank, and I am glad you found this helpful.

[@skibsteds]

Thank you for this, Jim!

[@JimNix]

thanks for watching Dennis!

[@whooptydj]

Thanks Jim.

[@JimNix]

thanks for watching!

[@Lysander-Spooner]

Good tutorial. Curves are very powerful and you can do a completer edit with them.

[@JimNix]

thanks Lysander and yes it's an amazing tool for sure!

[@NJM1948]

Excellent tutorial Jim - I had a fair idea of how curves worked but always strived to get my results with the sliders. Now though, you have inspired me to go for it!!! I also learned about using anchor points to keep those areas from moving when fine tuning specific parts. Very well explained and made to look easier than people new to curves may have thought

[@JimNix]

thanks so much Nigel I appreciate it!

[@donjohnson4983]

Good tutorial. Curves is also a great color correction tool (especially when a gray card is used, which requires 2 photos, of course). Nonetheless, I would've used the color curves on the color wheel (if gray is included) first and noted that only the gray is affected. Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Magenta, & Yellow (Cyan, Magenta, & Yellow being RGB generated) are unaffected (at least in Photoshop). Then do the landscape shot where the colors are not at 100%. In other words, if any of the colors are less than 100% (e.g., Red at less than 255 w/8bit, etc) the color curve will affect it all the way from a 255 bright color to Black. CMYK RGB colors are interesting (e.g., RGB Magenta at 50%, Red at 128 & Blue at 128 will be affected by Red and Blue curves but not the Green curve). And regular CMYK colors ... well, experiment (the key to understanding). But note that regular CMYK colors will lighten (i.e., a 50% Magenta will lighten in the green zone and darken in the Magenta zone. Remember though, if a color (RGB or CYMK) is not in the photo, it will not be affected by the color curves.

[@JimNix]

Thanks for sharing and all good points.

[@williamschone9358]

Excellent video again. At least for me, a point of confusion sets in with seemingly so many different methods to arrive at the same place, at least reasonably. There are so many tools to affect light & color it’s difficult for me to determine which one should I use. Is there a specific situation where you would use the curves adjustment rather than the HSL tool or the color harmony tool? I suppose part of it depends on which one is the most familiar? But each time you introduce another it adds one more option, deeply appreciated. Bill

[@JimNix]

Hi Bill and thanks, and most of the time for color work I will use Color Harmony simply bc it is pretty easy to use and super powerful. I find it's easier than Curves for color work. So if you already use it and like, I don't see a need to do it in Curves instead, other than just working on your skills with it and getting a good understanding of it all. Hope that makes sense. Thanks!

[@FabrizioBertorino]

Excellent video, thank you a lot! Just for curiosity, can the tools in "Armony of colors" (in the Professional section of Edit tab) do a similar job?

[@JimNix]

Thanks much and yes Color Balance (inside of Color Harmony) has essentially the same color controls as Curves, but it probably easier to use.

[@cjphotography77]

Good stuff JIM. As always. Witch E explains masking?? I have trouble understanding it. Thanks.

[@JimNix]

Thanks much and this video will help with masking: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aoDTe2Npoq-Krs0

[@cjphotography77]

THANKS JIM. If you will, take a look at some of my work using Neo. @cjphotography77. I'd like your feedback.

[@meeker5jh]

I see how this really allows for fine tuning of color and tone. Would you use Supercontrast first and them go back and perform fine adjustments or is Supercontrast enough in itself?

[@JimNix]

It depends on the image. I will often just use Curves a little bit, and then use Supercontrast as my second tool, after Develop. But Supercontrast is good enough to use on it's own (after Develop Raw, that is). Thanks.

[@alangauld6079]

One thing I love about curves in Affinity Photo is that you can use a color dropper tool to sample the image and it will create an anchor on the curve at the exact luminance value. It's really useful but I can't find any way to do it in Neo. Do you know of a way?

[@JimNix]

I don't believe there is any way to do this in Luminar.

[@GregoryLopez1]

Unfortunately Neo didn't have a tonal selection tool for curves where you can click on part of the image and it will set an anchor point at the point's tonal value in curves. Do you have a workaround for this? Or is it something you don't need?

[@JimNix]

Yeah that's not in Neo, and no workaround that I am aware of.

[@TC_Conner]

Dot = anchor/control point. 😎

[@JimNix]

ha well that's my term for it, not sure if it has an official name or not 😀

[@TC_Conner]

@@JimNix If you ask me, the official term is what you mentioned - anchor/control point.

[@JimNix]

@@TC_Conner works for me, it's settled then! 😁

[@TC_Conner]

@@JimNix It’ll not be the same next time when you don’t say “dot.” 😂😂

[@JimNix]

@@TC_Conner ha true I will have to watch what I am saying!