Photoshop Curves - Pt.1 One Tool to Rule Them All! - The curves tool for Landscape Photographers

The curves tool is the most powerful tonal adjustment tool in Photoshop. It lets you take full control of brightness and contrast in an incredibly finessed way. In this video I explain how to use the curves tool as part of a landscape photography workflow. I explain exactly what tone curves are, what moving the curve around does to the contrast and brightness of an image, how the curve relates to the image histogram and a whole load of other tips.
This is the first part of a three part series on the Curves Tool in Photoshop. In the second part I talk about using Layer Masks to apply curves locally. In the third part I talk about the colour curves.
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[@jordanwheatley602]

"there's no such things a free lunch when it comes to contrast" Amazing ahahaha, Would wear a shirt with this quote on it XD

[@maximolange4409]

Alex I am learning a lot from this tutorials of yours. Thank you very much for putting them together, I am sure it takes a lot of time and effort. They are certainly helping my editing and understanding of what I am doing instead of just doing it. Keep the great work up!

[@mahdijangjo9655]

👏👏👏 it is very clear, simple and illuminating. I love your videos. I am leveling up my editing skills using your videos. I made your advice my slogan:"Try to keep things as simple as possible ".

[@alexnail]

Thanks and glad to hear it’s helped you simplify!

[@matts3957]

Not boring in the slightest! This was a very clear explanation of something which has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Thank you.

[@dicklloyd9584]

Very helpful video. Many thanks, Alex.

[@alexnail]

You're welcome!

[@henriborius6158]

I love the clarity of your explanations ; It's very helpful to improve a workflow. Thank you.

[@alexnail]

Thanks for the comment Henri!

[@IamUke]

Excellent treatment of curves, Alex. I like how you noted that the angle of the line reflects contrast. I never thought of that and it helps. Thanks for sharing!

[@alexnail]

Yeah its a useful thing to understand!

[@paulgoodey3478]

Excellent explanation on curves Alex.

[@richardwood6121]

Thanks Alex for another engaging video. My understanding of the curves tool has improved hugely. Incredibly useful.

[@alexnail]

Great to hear Richard 👍

[@andycoleman2708]

So helpful! The curves tool is definitely intimidating but you made it much easier to understand.

[@alexnail]

That’s great to hear Andy, thanks!

[@briannicholson2971]

Hi Alex , I am a recent subscriber here and I am loving all your tuition videos, been into landscape photography for a year and now looking into areas I can use Photoshop, this series and your lightroom ones are first class and well explained 👍🙂

[@MagnusLindbom]

I agree Alex. The curve tool is so powerful!

[@alexnail]

For sure! Hope you're doing well Magnus!

[@CharlesParmar]

Cannot wait for your next video on the topic. When is it coming out? BTW... awesome knowledge shared... the power of Curves!

[@alexnail]

Cheers Charles - yeah curves is a really fantastic tool for sure! Next video will probably be in a weeks time :)

[@johnchambers6272]

Thank you Alex. As always a lot of thought has gone into these videos and the concept is explained very well. Looking forward to the followup video of combining a Curves adjustment with masking after viewing the practical example at the end of this video. Your time in creating these videos is very much appreciated.

[@alexnail]

No worries John; glad you’re getting something out of them!

[@brianp1888]

Very helpful Alex. Your recent videos have been really helping to change the way I think about editing to more of a first principles approach. Actually understanding what the various tools are doing makes it so much easier to spot mistakes I'd otherwise have overlooked and edit in a more deliberate way. Honestly really invaluable stuff.

[@alexnail]

That's perfect, to be honest that's the entire purpose of these videos. Just understand that the tools are there, learn how to use them, then focus your attention on the kind of changes you would like to make!

[@gadus5510]

Thank you Alex for the awesome tutorial!

[@alexnail]

My pleasure :)

[@petermaddern6653]

Excellent explanation Alex thank you.

[@alexnail]

My pleasure Peter :)

[@pietermoolman8087]

Thanks Alex for this video. I applied this to my workflow and it realy makes a massive difference. Can't wait for the next video on this topic.

[@alexnail]

Awesome stuff Pieter. The next part is going up today!

[@chachie12345]

Awesome Video. Really appreciate the quality of both the content and quality of your videos. Really looking forward to part 2

[@alexnail]

Thanks a lot Aaron :)

[@philkemp8178]

Excellent video. Thanks Alex. Looking forward to the next 2!

[@alexnail]

The second part should be up today :)

[@philkemp8178]

@@alexnail 👍🏻🙂

[@carlreid4161]

I found this really helpful Alex, I use C1 but it’s equally applicable as you mentioned, great instructional video very clearly presented, thanks for sharing your knowledge! Cheers Carl

[@alexnail]

My pleasure Carl. C1 is certainly quite different in the way the controls work so I found it quite difficult when coming from Lightroom, but you can certainly get equally good or better results

[@scottweaverphotovideo]

Sure wish LR curves would adjust via the arrow keys. One of the reasons I pass files onto PS for those adjustments. Thanks for the great vid.

[@alexnail]

yeah that little finger button thing is quite handy sometimes!

[@ianperkins1360]

Thanks once again for a clear explanation of the science behind the tool. I'm currently editing almost exclusively in Lightroom, Alex (as I'm new to the software and there's so much to learn!). Much of what you showed there can equally be done with the tone curve in Lightroom, can't it? Is there any specific reason you would recommend moving to PS for this, or would it be part of a general workflow that would involve other tools in PS?

[@alexnail]

You can be a bit more precise in Photoshop but the most important reason is that you have access to masks (next video). You can use the curve in Lightroom of course (its very similar but handles colour in a different way), but you will find in most cases that you can just use the sliders instead. A combination of the exposure, contrast, blacks and whites sliders can effectively create almost any approximate shape of curve you could reasonably want. There is no real difference between the sliders and the curve and for most changes the sliders are just easier. The reality is with most tonal adjustments I make with the curve I want to mask at the same time, so I use photoshop. That's really why its the last 5% and I wouldn't advise getting involved until you feel actively limited by Lightroom in some way!

[@ianperkins1360]

@@alexnail Ah I see. I've not used masks at all to be fair, but it's probably long overdue that I understand and use them, so I'll look forward to the follow-up video. :)

[@dominiclester3232]

Nice but little of this is particularly advanced, especially with your clear explanations. I would like to flag that Levels has 5 sliders which can independently be set, unlike curves. I mention this because I do use the 2 sliders you didn’t cover.

[@alexnail]

You may not find this particularly advanced, but it seems you don’t understand it regardless! The two output sliders wouldn’t ordinarily be changed by landscape photographers hence why I don’t mention them (in general you wouldn’t want to make black or white a tone of grey) However you can indeed replicate this, if you wish, with curves by altering the y position of the black and white points respectively.

[@HV71851]

This explanation really clarifies the histogram. My question is, are you working on a tiff image after LR? I don’t use LR but I process my images in RAW first and then I open it on PS to do final adjustments.

[@alexnail]

I use 16-bit PSDs but this is more out of habit. A long time ago Tiffs became layer compatible so I would say 16-bit Tiff is probably the better choice (though there is no real difference)

[@NigelDownes-fi2pk]

Thanks Alex, another quality video! Two questions, please: I noticed that you set the B&W points you used the RGB histogram. As the RGB histogram is an average I tend to make the same adjustments using 'each' R, G and B histogram. Will the results differ? Also, do you know if there's a 'snap-to' tool option which makes adding lock points to the 45 degree line possible without inadvertently clicking outside it and having to then drag it back to avoid making any unintended tone changes? Looking forward to your next video. Nigel

[@alexnail]

Just to avoid any confusion with what ‘average’ might mean (not saying you have it wrong) but the RGB histogram is the three histograms added and then divided by 3. Setting white and black points to EXACTLY the same spot on each channel would be the same as setting them ‘at once’ in the RGB histogram but would obviously be 3 times slower! Setting them to points according to their relative R, G and B histograms so that each is just starting to clip would always result in some sort of change to the colour. Whether that is a problem would depend on the image. I would strongly recommend only setting the white and black points in the RGB combined histogram. Use the R G and B curves to deal with colour casts. I’ll cover that in part 3 next week.

[@alexnail]

Oh and as for your second question...no, but you can create a preset to do that

[@NigelDownes-fi2pk]

@@alexnail Perfect. Something less to do.

[@NigelDownes-fi2pk]

@@alexnail Okay thanks, I'll need to investigate which preset to use and how to use it.

[@alexnail]

@@NigelDownes-fi2pk if you open up curves you will see at the top there is a preset drop down on the tool itself. To create a new one just create the curve and then there is a drop down button to the top right of the tool that allows you to save a preset