Photoshop is a tremendously complex program, and as such, there is often more than one way to accomplish any one task. One of its most fundamental but overlooked tools is Curves, which many photographers shy away from due to its intimidating appearance. Nonetheless, once you master, you will be hard-pressed to find a more capable and efficient tool for many needs. This fantastic video tutorial will show you the ins and outs of the Curves tool and how to use it to edit your images.
Coming to you from The School of Photography, this great video tutorial will show you how to use the Curves tool in Photoshop. The Curves tool can seem a bit hard to understand at first, but the general concept is pretty straightforward. Along the horizontal axis are all the luminance values from 0 to 255. Along the vertical axis are the output values. If you want a certain luminance value to be brighter, you find it along the horizontal axis and push it up the vertical axis, and if you want it to be darker, you push it down. This allows you to very quickly and precisely edit exposure, contrast, shadows, and highlights. Furthermore, because Photoshops also has curves for the individual color channels, you can easily apply color grades with the tool as well. Check out the video above for the full rundown.
