Modern digital cameras are pretty intelligent little devices and often do a great job of accurately capturing picturesque moments. Even so, the potential of the modern digital darkroom to produce outstanding photos is even more impressive. Of course, I am talking about Photoshop. With the help of Adobe Photoshop, you add that extra wow factor that makes people take a second look. This article will cover one such digital darkroom method: a simple curves adjustment that will make colors pop.
Just what are curves?
Curves allow you the Photographer to control tones and contrast in your photos. By fine tuning with the curves tool, you are able to make the various elements of our photos stand out. Curves allow you to make colors richer, shadows darker, and highlights brighter.
Enough already, on with it!
This tutorial is meant to get to the point, so enough academics. Here’s what to do:
Open your photo in Adobe Photoshop and duplicate it. Simple enough? If you have a 16 bit TIFF file, great! If you don’t know what that is, or only have a JPEG, that’s fine too. Once you see the photo on-screen, click Image → Duplicate. We are going to work on a duplicate copy of your photo so that we can keep the original around, unmodified. Here is the original photo I will be using to illustrate this process:
Fig. 1 - Original Photo
Add a curves adjustment layer.
- Click Layer.
- Click New Adjustment Layer.
- Click Curves….
- If you wish to name this adjustment layer, complete the “Name” field in the dialog window that appears. Click “OK”.
The curves tool will appear on your screen with a straight, diagonal line through it’s grid. Using your mouse, grab the line at the lower left intersection point (point 1). Pull it down, and to the right. Now, grab the upper right intersection point with your mouse (point 2), and pull it up and to the left. Both of these intersection points are circled in red in figure 2 below.
Fig. 2 - The curves adjustment.
As you adjust these two points, you will see your photo change. You need not pull these points too far from their original resting places — with curves, a little bit goes a long way. When you are finished, your previously diagonal line will now be an S-shaped curve. How steep these curves are will affect the final result in your photo. Here is my final curves adjustment to our test photo:
Fig. 3 - The final curves adjustment.
And here is what the photo looks like after the curves adjustment:
Fig. 4 - The final product.
The final product’s shadows are richer, highlights are brighter, and colors are much more vibrant. This simple curves adjustment takes almost no time at all, and the results are often stunning.
