In this article, I want to talk about the importance of knowing the basics of curves adjustments in your post-processing workflow. They’re one of the best tools to edit your images in Adobe Photoshop.

As we all know, there are countless ways to edit your shots in this massive program, so I can only scratch the surface in this post, but I'm going to show you the best ways to use curves to achieve excellent results on your own work quickly without much effort.

So now, let's get started!

How to balance the tones

When editing your photos, it's essential to balance the tones to have a good starting point. So what do I mean by that?

We all know the situation when you're in the field, and you want to capture a high dynamic range scene with lots of different tonal values that barely fit in the histogram.

This often happens when you have a blank sky with some golden sunrise/sunset light and a darker foreground in your frame.

The sky appears still super bright on the back of the camera screen even when you made sure not to clip any bright highlights. At the same time, it’s crucial that you also watch out not to lose any shadow information on the left side of the histogram, which is always a balancing act.

As long as you have captured all the tones you need, it will be easier later on in Photoshop to balance them out, and that's were curves adjustments come into play.

When you want to even out the histogram to get a flat starting file to further work with, it's often enough to use two different curves adjustment layers.

Please take a look at the screenshots below to see what I mean by that.

When that's done, you use the same method again but now to brighten the dark tones. Drag up the middle part of the curves to get a natural brightening effect and use the gradient again on your layer mask.

You can always redo this if you don't like what it does by simply readjusting the masking impact.

Make sure that the soft part of the gradient meets the previous adjustment to get a natural transition between the darks and highlights.

How to do contrast adjustments

The most obvious way to use curves in Adobe Photoshop is to adjust contrast. It's so easy to work on the darks, highlights, and mid-tones with one single adjustment layer.

I personally recommend using a separate layer for each tonal value; this gives you more flexibility if you want to reduce the opacity of one individual adjustment or work with a different blend mode to refine it further.

When using only one layer, you will decrease or increase all effects at the same time without having much control of it.

There are two ways I like to work on contrast inside curves layers. Sometimes it just needs a global adjustment to make the image better.

You can simply darken the darks and brighten the highlights on the curve to get the desired effect.

There is also a preset implemented inside, which you can also use. When you pick "linear contrast," you will have a slight darkening in the darks and a little bit of brightening effect in the highlights.

That's often enough already!

The most powerful way to work with contrast, though, is to use local adjustments to target only specific tonal values.

A secure method to target the tones you want to adjust is to use the hand tool inside the curves layer. When using it, you can simply hover over an area of the image, and it will show you the part of the curve you need to work on.

Now you can make your adjustment, and it will target only the desired area. I recommend inverting the white layer mask to hide the effect, and when you use a white brush to paint in the adjustment locally, you can get a lot of control of your edits.

How to do color adjustments

I'm sure you haven't used curves for your color adjustments many times before, and I understand why. There are many more effective ways to do that in Photoshop. However, I still like to use one or two tricks to work with color inside the curves layer.

You can select one of the three color channels to work on them separately by clicking on the drop-down menu inside the adjustment tab.

I personally like to add some blues to my shadows and some warmth to the highlights to create a nice but settle color contrast.

To do that, you just select the blue tones and raise the black point on the very left bottom of the curve. Now we added blues to the darkest tones of our image.

I highly recommend moving it only by a few points; otherwise, it will look weird fast.

After that, I do the same thing with the highlights. I like to use the red channel to add warmth to them. Again, simply select it in the drop-down menu and pick the top right part of the curve to drag it towards the left.

This way, you increase the red tones in your highlights. Please keep in mind that this only works when you already have some warm tones in your shot. It won't look good on a grey sky without any light in it.

Check the video to learn more about how to use Curves in Photoshop

How to remove color casts

The second way to adjust color together with curves layers is to remove a strong color cast. I mentioned this in my "how to use color adjustments in Adobe Photoshop" article already, and I'm going to quickly talk about it again in this post.

It's so easy to use and powerful at the same time!

When you experience a strong color cast in your photo, it's often tough to remove it by simply adjusting the white balance in Camera Raw. I recommend using curves to solve the issue.

You can see that the sample image has an intense red color cast throughout the dark and mid-tones, which often happens in blue hour scenes with artificial light in it.

Now simply use the red channel in the curves layer to reduce the red cast overall. You can hover over your image using the hand tool to spot the area where it's the strongest, and that will be the part of the curve where you start dragging it down to overall reduce the red color in the image.

You can always redo it if the effect is too strong or lower the opacity of the layer to dial it until you like it.

How to use blend modes

Last but not least, I want to talk about blend modes quickly. When you make an adjustment in Photoshop, your default mode is "normal," which means you're adjusting both contrast and color at the same time.

If you want to overcome this "problem," then you simply use the blend mode "color" to only adjust the color of your image.

This is helpful when removing a color cast, for example. When you turn down the red tones in your shot, they also get darkened, which can look weird sometimes. Use color as your blend mode, and you won't have that issue.

The same goes for contrast. When you darken your shot, you also add in some color, which can make an overall colorful image even more saturated.

To overcome this effect, simply change the blend mode to "luminosity," and you will only work with contrast, not with color! Simple but effective!

There are, of course, so many more ways to work with curves adjustments to edit your images. A big part of my photoshop tutorials covers the advanced usage of this powerful layer, so make sure to check them out!

So what are your favorite ways to use curves in Adobe Photoshop?

Feel free to let me know down in the comments, and if you have any questions, I'm always there to help you!

Cheers,
Daniel