• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Offers
  • How tos
  • Listicles
  • Explainers
  • A-Z
  • Downloads
    • Adobe
    • DxO software
    • Capture One
    • Exposure X
    • ON1 software
    • Skylum
  • About

Life after Photoshop

  • Lightroom
  • Capture One
  • DxO PhotoLab
  • Nik Collection
  • Exposure X
  • ON1 Photo RAW
  • Aurora HDR

Curves

Curves are one of the most fundamental image adjustment tools in photo editing software, but they're not often well understood – and particularly the relationship between levels and curves adjustments.

The easiest way to think of it is that levels adjustments are used to maximise the tonal range or total contrast in the photo, from dense black to brilliant white, whereas curves are used to adjust the contrast within a specific range of tones.

An example might help. You might have a photo with maximum contrast that still looks rather flat. Typically you can make these pictures look better by increasing the contrast in the midtones, and you can do that by steepening the middle of the curve. This inevitably flattens out the highlight and shadow areas, though, so you get less contrast here than you had before. Often, this doesn't matter, but it does highlight a key point about curves –  that there's only a finite amount of contrast in the picture and that you use curves adjustments to control where in the range of tones that contrast is strongest.

When to use a high key look and how to create it with curves

November 19, 2022 by Rod Lawton

A high key image is one which consists almost entirely of bright tones. This works really well for subjects with white or near-white tones and gives a very bright, airy look. Not every image needs a full range of tones from solid black to brilliant white, and not every image needs the ‘perfect’ histogram. Histograms are there to tell you what’s happening, not what to do.

Filed Under: Featured, Lightroom, TutorialsTagged With: Curves, High key

Nik Collection presets: Even on a Cloudy Day (Color Efex Pro)

June 20, 2020 by Rod Lawton

Color Efex Pro Recipe

You can learn a lot from experimenting with manual adjustments and individual filters in a program like Color Efex Pro, but you can learn even more by dismantling a preset to see how its individual parts work together.

Filed Under: Featured, Nik Collection, TutorialsTagged With: Curves, Levels, Presets

Lightroom tone curves explained: Tone Curve vs Point Curve vs Target Curve adjustments

May 17, 2020 by Life after Photoshop

Lightroom curves

Curves adjustments are one of the key tools in photo editing, and Lightroom offers three ways of making curves adjustments. What’s more, the curves tools look different in Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC. Complicated? Not once it’s explained…

Filed Under: Featured, Lightroom, TutorialsTagged With: Curves

Dawlish Beach in black and white, with Exposure X5 adjustment layers

May 16, 2020 by Life after Photoshop

Exposure X5

This project turns a regular color RAW file into a strong black and white image in Exposure X5. It uses a number of different tools so it’s a good chance to see how these work and how they can be used together. It’s also a good example the kind of image which works well in […]

Filed Under: Exposure X, Featured, TutorialsTagged With: Adjustment layer, Black and white, Borders and frames, Curves, LUTs, Split toning

Moody mono with a Leica M10 Monochrom and Capture One

March 29, 2020 by Life after Photoshop

I met my donkey friend while I was out testing a Leica M10 Monochrom and 28mm f/2 Summicron lens. For those who don’t know, this is a rangefinder camera with manual focusing, so getting my friend’s eye sharp was a special challenge as he was getting restless because I didn’t have any carrots. The Leica […]

Filed Under: Capture One, Featured, TutorialsTagged With: Black and white, Curves, Dodging and burning, Vignette

Levels vs curves vs luma curves: ways to adjust contrast in photos

July 26, 2019 by Life after Photoshop

Levels and curves can both be used to adjust the contrast in photos, but how are they different, which should you use and is one better than the other?

Filed Under: Capture One, Editing A-Z, Featured, General, TutorialsTagged With: Curves, Histogram, Levels

Restore faded art using levels and curves

August 15, 2017 by Rod Lawton

Levels and curves

With careful use of levels and curves adjustments you can rescue even the faintest and most faded artworks and restore both saturation and contrast. Levels and curves are two of the most basic adjustment tools in any image-editing program, but there’s often confusion about which to use and when, and it often appears as if […]

Filed Under: UncategorizedTagged With: Curves, Levels

10 tips for curves adjustments

November 22, 2016 by Rod Lawton

Almost any image-editor worthy of the name offers curves adjustments, but they can be tricky things to get right. It’s easy to overcook the results or fix a problem in one area only to cause a problem in another. So here are ten top curves tips to show how they work, what they can and cannot […]

Filed Under: General, ListiclesTagged With: Contrast, Curves

How to adjust the point curve in Lightroom

September 3, 2013 by Rod Lawton

Adjusting the point curve in Lightroom

Curves adjustments are tricky to get right. Small changes can have a big impact on the image, and it’s easy to make things worse not better. That’s why Adobe’s provided a secret weapon – the Adjust Point Curve tool in Lightroom. Normally, you make curves adjustments by estimating or measuring the position of the area […]

Filed Under: Lightroom, TutorialsTagged With: Curves

Adding localised levels and curves adjustments in Color Efex Pro 4

August 8, 2013 by Rod Lawton

Nik Software Color Efex Pro levels and curves

DxO Color Efex Pro 4 isn’t just a collection of special effects. It also has a number of powerful image-editing tools hidden amongst them, and one of these is the Levels & Curves tool. You can use this to make adjustments to your images in the same way you would in Photoshop, Elements and other […]

Pages: Page 1 Page 2

Filed Under: Nik Collection, TutorialsTagged With: Curves, Levels

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to this site

Enter your email address to subscribe to Life after Photoshop and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Adobe Lightroom: what is it, where do you get it, what does it cost?

Adobe Lightroom is not one program but three. You could … [Read More...] about Adobe Lightroom: what is it, where do you get it, what does it cost?

The best photo editing software for organizing, editing, RAW and effects

Choosing the best image editing software used to be easy. … [Read More...] about The best photo editing software for organizing, editing, RAW and effects

Layers explained

Layers explained: what they do and how to use them

Layers are a central part of many photo editing processes, … [Read More...] about Layers explained: what they do and how to use them

BAN adjustments… Basic And Necessary image corrections to do first

Photo editing software does two quite different jobs. It can … [Read More...] about BAN adjustments… Basic And Necessary image corrections to do first

More Posts from this Category

Mission statement

Life after Photoshop is not anti-Photoshop or anti-subscriptions. It exists to showcase the many Photoshop alternatives that do more, go further, or offer more creative inspiration to photographers.

Affiliate links

Life after Photoshop is funded by affiliate links and may be paid a commission for downloads. This does not affect the price you pay, the ratings in reviews or the software selected for review.

Contact

Email lifeafterphotoshop@gmail.com

Copyright © 2023 Life after Photoshop · News Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in