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Digital Darkroom : Curves
Published: 2005-03-03 12:19:54 +0000 UTC; Views: 32688; Favourites: 338; Downloads: 10338
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Description
Hello fellow readers,
Today's tutorial has been designed and written by with a couple additions and the traditional ~photo-class layout from ~roy204 .
It is an introduction to the concept and usage of the "Curves" tool in Adobe® Photoshop® and other popular image editing picks. We hope you find this useful, it is mostly for beginners although you may always find out things you didn't know...
As always let us know what you think, and feel free to add any comments on the content, add your own tips or correct any mistake or misconception you spot.
Have fun!
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Comments: 55
thanks!! i didnt think i could understand that mystical thing called curves in ps unless i reached enlightenment.
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This is very helpful. 
Thanks again for the awesome tutorial.
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I never knew Photoshop could do this. Thanks.
I have been recently manipulating my photos with curves, though before now I didn't know they were called curves. I've been using a program that came with my camera. There I get to manipulate the Red, Green, Blue, and RGB curves. I move the Red, green, blue up and the RGB in the oposite direction so I get both the bottom two of the three major curves you show in your tutorial. Seems to make the colors brighter in a desired way without doing much else. What exactly am I doing?
Thanks.
Daggertooth
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The yearbook staff that I'm on right now could really benefit from using this for some of our pictures!
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Fantastic tutorial, I can't thank you enough! I've certainly played with Curves before, but have never used nor understood anchor points! This is extremely helpful for me, using dramtic lighting in my nudes!
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Cool, there was a day that i was going to try that tool to see what was its use...
Then I got my image all ugly xD
And since then I've never used it again huahua...
But now i'll try it again \o/
I've favorited it, but not here in DA, i've favorited in my browser!
Thanks, and congrats for a job very well done!
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Very nice indeed. Really given me the confidence to go and play around with the tool, and it's really useful. Thanks for sharing!
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Shame on DA... took a year to recognise the work from photoclass group
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oh! thanks.
a lot
i'm looking at it ... right now
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Thanks! It worked just how I suspected from playing with it all these years
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Nothing new to me really, but a good tutorial anyway. Indeed, one of the most important tools.
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i 
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have read through the article, is really nice
haven't used that tool before, but i will deffinately practice
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Ok my juice for the tutorial:
Alt+click the grid, it will get finer. Better for precise adjustments.
Use the pencil mode for drawing curves by hand. It helps at experimenting with different values.
Otherwise quite solid.
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looking back at this, now i've realized that this really is a very brief intro to curves
but its still nice anyways.
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Fantastico!
As always, *photo-class RULES and is the BEST and keep up the GREAT WORK!
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This tutorial helped me very much.. Thankyou! I really didn't know you had to separate the line to use it properly.. I kept wondering what everyone was talking about when they said S-Curve.. Helped me a lot.
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Thank you very much, your systematic way is much better than the haphazard way I use Curves.
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I've seen that graph in the GIMP before and couldn't use it because I had no clue what it was good for - so thanks for this tutorial!
BTW: The --> Farben (=Colors) --> Kurven (=Curves) is in the Bild (=Image) menu of my version of GIMP.... don't know if that's a mistake in the tutorial or maybe just a matter of different versions. (I have 1.2.5 in German)
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This article is magnificent. I've never known exactly what the curves tool was supposed to do, but now I do! I'll try using this on my photos~
Cheers!
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Wow, thanks so much, this is great! I never really knew how to use the curves tool properly -- it will be fun to try it out!
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I was finally able to take the time to open this and skim through it! Can't wait to try it out and put it to use!
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Wow. Thank you so much for this tutorial. I have noticed playing around with psp8 that curves helps my images but because I had no clue what it was doing, I really didn't understand it. Now after reading this and play with it for 2secs I realize I can improve my pictures greatly.
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Taking a look at this now, I like the fact that this is very basic and just gives an idea of what the curve can be used for. It shows a glimpse of the potential, and maybe enough to wet a persons tongue to find out more on their own. I don't think it shows the full potential of it, but I understand that it's not necessary in a introductory tutorial like this. Though this makes me think there will be a follow up more in-depth tutorial?
The layout also is great, I never noticed the little number circles on the other tutorials, whether they are new or not, I especially like having that, I often struggle to follow these kind of things.
Excellent work to both *pecchio and * roy204
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Great, very enlightening - I'll have to try to use curves on py pictures
Theres a few spelling mistakes at the start, if that counts...
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shrugz! to imagen i would ever understand such thing!
thanxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Nice tutorial, and it pleases me that you've included a small bit on other software--I thought that was really considerate of you.
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A clear and helpful tutorial. I remember when I was starting out curves scared the hell out of me but now I can't even imagine going back to Levels.
Just a small tip for those with the screen real-estate, hitting the enlarger button on the lower left corner of the window will give you a bigger graph and it's surprisingly easier for me to fine tune it how I want. Also for the extremely picky among us you can move a selected anchor point with your arrow keys. It took me an embarrassingly long time for me to figure out these little things.
This is a great beginners tutorial though, you guys are a real asset to the community.
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Another great and useful tutorial!
Thank you so much!
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The Curves dialog ahs always been a mystery to me. This will help, I'm sure! thanks!
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The _Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements_ book provides some Photoshop functionnalities to Elements, including curves. You can get some free tools for Element 1 & 2 at [link] and ciick on "Free Tools". Not available for Element 3 though.
You can also use blends to get some of the curve's effects: have a look at [link] in chapter "Dodging & Burning" / "Intro to Blends".
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Thanks a lot for these additions
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wow, very useful tutorial. I never knew you can do that in photoshop! thanks!
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