The curves tool is used to adjust

Draw curve : Select this to draw a curve that you like. Smooth the curve : This becomes clickable only after you have drawn a curve. Each click on this icon smoothens the curve a little.

Clicking it multiple times will smoothen the curve back to its default state. This is the graph in the middle with a straight line by default crossing diagonally from the lower left corner to the upper right corner.

Histograms are a topic itself and have been thoroughly explained in this tutorial. The two white points : One on each end of the curve or the diagonal line.

You can move these points anywhere within the graph. The two arrows : One of each end of the X-axis. The left arrow is black and the right arrow is white. Moving these two compresses the tonal range of the image.

Input : This is the value of the X-axis. It represents the tonal range and ranges from 0 to Clip to layer : Clicking this will clip the Curves adjustment layer to the layer underneath it. This means any adjustment will only affect the bottom layer. Clicking it will show you how the image looks before curve adjustment. Reset : This resets everything in the Curves properties panel to its default settings. Toggle layer visibility : Make the layer invisible or visible.

This is located on the top right-hand corner of the properties panel. There are a few options here that allow you to customize the display of the Curves panel. You can save the adjustments you have applied to add to the number of presets from the Preset dropdown menu.

Tonal contrast adjustment is what most of us use Curves for. Typically, an S-shaped curve is applied to the histogram by adding two points to the diagonal line and moving them apart up and down to create an S. What this does is basically making the bright areas brighter and the dark areas darker. This widens the gap between the two and therefore increases contrast. Did you know that by applying an S-shape in Curves to increase contrast, you inevitably increase saturation at the same time?

Although Curves adjustment affects saturation, the effect is fairly minor in most cases. To circumvent this issue in Photoshop, change the blend mode of the Curves adjustment layer to Luminosity. Any degree of adjustment you apply to Curves now will only affect the contrast. Curves can also be used to apply color adjustments. While keeping the S-shape of the curve, experiment with Hue, Saturation and Color blend mode.

These blend modes work in slightly different ways see blend mode explanation here. Depending on the type of image you have, the results are difficult to predict. This is why you have to experiment with the effect. Color Channels are massively underrated in my opinion.

Unlike other color adjustment tools, the RGB color channels curves are very versatile and you can use it creatively to create images that are really unique.

With our busy lives, we are often so focused to get things done that we prefer not to have too many options. If you are willing to spend some time to explore, Color Channels in Curves might just be what you need to get your artistic mind kicking. Selecting these will change the histogram to its respective colors. As you know, RGB are the primary colors of light shown in the color wheel here.

Look at the colors directly opposite red, green and blue RGB and you should notice these are cyan, magenta and yellow CMY. When you move the curve the diagonal line upwards, you are adding blue to the image.

But when you move it downwards, you are adding yellow because the opposite of blue is yellow in the RGB color wheel. This goes to the same for other color channels. You can use this to correct for color cast, color grading or split toning apply S-curve to a color channel. With the combination of layer masking, the application is only limited by your imagination. The Smooth button on the side normalizes the Curve that you drew in.

Any bumps in the road will be glossed over, leaving you with much smoother transitions between values and, by extension, a much more attractive photo. If you keep clicking it, you'll eventually be left with nothing but the original straight line. Such is life. Aside from these basic functions, there are a couple of additional options that you can take advantage of when using Curves in Photoshop:.

After a little bit of digging, you'll uncover a few other very interesting aspects of this Photoshop tool. Under the Channel dropdown, you can specify which color channel you would like to apply the Curve to. By default, you're manipulating all three at once.

Select Red , Green , or Blue to refine these channels precisely and independently of one another. It's a convenient way of grading your image or balancing your whites. By leaning into our blues, we're able to cool down the image naturalistically, in a way that doesn't pollute either of our extremes.

Here, you can catch us doing the opposite: we're removing some of the green in the shadow areas, giving our image a queer, magenta cast. Subtlety and restraint will be of vital importance here.

Clicking into the Presets dropdown reveals a myriad of Photoshop presets—some of these are simple adjustments in contrast, while others are meant to emulate the look of a negative color or an image that has been cross-processed. That's not really what we're going for here. Let's try the Strong Contrast preset instead.

Hey, now that's what we're talkin' about. Simple Curves adjustments like this can make a great baseline template to work off of, especially if you've never used this tool before. Curves are widely applicable, and this goes far beyond the world of photography—they can be used to adjust the look of vector graphics, computer-generated compositions, and even illustrations and other forms of visual art.

To see the full extent of what Curves in Photoshop can do for you, we advise that you use them early, often, and at every opportunity possible. We go over the basics of editing in Camera Raw in Photoshop. A node is a point you create on your curve. You can remove the node by clicking and dragging it outside the grid.

If you want to create a node and have the curve snap to the node, simply click anywhere on the grid as I did with the node denoted by the red arrow in the image above. I want to make these pixels lighter. As I do this, the diagonal line will start to bend and become a curve.

This is because all of the areas highlighted with yellow stripes in the image above where my curve is bending upwards away from the original diagonal line are now being made lighter. The further away the curve is from the original line green arrow denoted the original diagonal line , the lighter the pixels will be.

The Input was originally It is important to note that because this is a curve, there are many pixels that will be affected by the change. However, you can mitigate some of these affects by creating more points along the curve.

More on this in a moment. In this case, the blank spaces on the far-left and far-right of the histogram mean that there are little to no pixels with these values. Instead, we have endpoints for our curve. We can use these endpoints to create essentially the same effect as the levels tool. For example, to change the blackpoint of our image with the curves tool, I can click and drag the node in the bottom left corner blue arrow in the photo above of the grid to the right making sure it stays on the bottom of the grid.

What this does is increases the value on the Input range the bottom gradient while keeping the output range the left gradient set to black. To change the white point, I can click and drag the node in the top right corner red arrow to the left — making sure the node stays at the top of the grid.

This shifts the original Input range value to the left while keeping the output range value set to pure white. In other words, it is changing which original pixels in your image will now represent white pixels. This helps correct some of the brightness and contrast problems the current image has, making it look slightly more appealing. The curve will snap to that new point blue arrow. The pixels to the right of my anchor node have remained untouched, whereas the darker pixels are now brighter.

First, there is the Input and Output values outlined in blue in the image above. These values, which I discussed briefly earlier, display the precise location of your node on the grid. The Input value is what the pixel value was before it was changed. The Output value is the new value. If the Output value is higher than the Input value, it means the pixel is brighter than it was originally. If the Output value is lower, it means the pixel is now darker than the original. Next to Input and Output values, you can select the type of curve you want connecting each node.

Note that only the current active node will have its curve changed. The curves became straight, which slightly changed the look of my image. By default, this is set to smooth — which uses the traditional method of adding nodes to the curve to change its shape. The Red channel — and all color channels for that matter — works a little differently than the Value channel.