Curves and color, one tool at a time

The Light sliders set how bright a photo is. Curves and the color tools decide how it feels: how hard the contrast bites, which colors carry the frame, and what tint sits in the shadows. This post goes through each of them in the editor's own order.

Curves

Curves sits under Light in the Adjustments panel. It remaps tone: every brightness in the photo goes in on the bottom of the graph and comes out at the height of the curve above it. A straight line changes nothing. An S shape adds contrast. Lifting the bottom-left corner fades the blacks.

There are two ways to draw it, and the buttons above the graph switch between them.

Point curve

The point curve is the one you shape by hand.

• Press anywhere on the curve to add a point, and drag it.
• Drag the black point and the white point at the ends up or down to fade the blacks or dim the whites. They cannot be removed.
• A curve holds up to 16 points.

The keyboard works too. Focus a point and use the arrow keys to move it, with Shift for bigger steps. Insert or + adds a point where the curve has the most room, and Delete removes the point you are on. Press Esc in the middle of a drag to put the curve back as it was.

Slider curve

The slider curve shapes the same graph with six sliders: White Level, Highlights, Lights, Darks, Shadows and Black Level. It is the quicker way to add contrast without placing points. Raise Highlights and Lights and lower Darks and Shadows, and you have an S curve.

The bar under the graph, Tonal regions, sets where each region ends. Drag its three handles to make the shadows a wider band, or the highlights a narrower one.

Channels

The L, R, G and B buttons pick the channel. L is luminance, the red, green and blue channels together, and it applies first. The R, G and B curves then shape each color on its own: lift the middle of the blue curve and the midtones go cooler, pull it down and they go warmer.

Reset Curves, in the group's menu, puts every channel back to a straight line.

Color

The Color group opens with four sliders: Temperature, Tint, Saturation and Vibrance. Saturation strengthens every color by the same amount. Vibrance does more to the muted colors than to the strong ones, so skin keeps its tone while a gray sky gains some blue.

For white balance, press W and click a spot on the photo that should be neutral gray. Temperature and Tint move to make it gray. Esc puts the picker away.

Under the four sliders sit three tools for finer work.

Color Mixer

The Color Mixer works on one color at a time. Pick a band, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Aqua, Blue, Purple or Magenta, then move its three sliders:

• Hue shifts the color toward its neighbors. Moving Green toward yellow makes foliage look later in the summer.
• Saturation strengthens or mutes that color alone.
• Luminance makes it lighter or darker. Lower Blue's Luminance and a sky deepens without touching anything else.

Orange is the band for skin. A small cut to its Saturation calms a face that looks too red.

Color Calibration

Color Calibration works below the other color tools. It moves the red, green and blue primaries the whole photo is built from, so a small change reaches every color at once.

Each primary has Hue and Saturation. Shadows has its own Tint slider, which leans the darkest tones toward green or magenta. A common use is to raise the Blue primary's Saturation, which gives a photo a richer, more filmic color.

Color Grading

Color Grading tints the tones rather than the colors. Its wheels are for the shadows, the midtones and the highlights, and a Global wheel tints the whole photo. A button above them switches between the three wheels and the one Global wheel.

Drag the dot in a wheel away from the center to pick a hue and how strong it is. Each wheel also has a Luminance slider, which lightens or darkens its range. Double-click a wheel, or press Home while it has focus, to clear its tint.

Two sliders shape all three:

• Blending sets how far the three ranges overlap. Higher blends them more smoothly.
• Balance moves the line between shadows and highlights, so a tint reaches further into one or the other.

Teal in the shadows and a warm tone in the highlights is the classic place to start. Keep the saturation low, and the photo looks graded without looking tinted.

Work faster

• Hold Shift while you drag a slider for finer control. Double-click a slider to reset it.
• Each group's menu has Reset, Copy and Paste, so you can carry a grade from one photo to the next on its own.
• Press Space or \ to compare with the original.
• When a grade is worth keeping, save it as a preset. The presets post shows how.

Your edits stay on your device, in your browser's storage or the desktop app's own storage. The photo file is never changed.

Open Litria

Open Litria in Chrome or Edge, or download the desktop app. Open a photo, open Curves, and draw a gentle S.