7 TIPS TO MASTER THE TONE CURVE IN LIGHTROOM! Simple Steps - Powerful Results

the three images I've got here on the screen shares something in common it's the fact they've actually only been changed through one panel in Lightroom from their original camera raw state so if you want to see how I create unique looks like this using just one Adobe Lightroom panel stay with me you've guessed it it's the curves panel it's insanely powerful and if you can master the curves panel you become the boss of your photos so in this tutorial I'm gonna walk you through and just show you exactly how I use the curves panel if you don't know anything about curves d'amour I'm going to break it down so it's super simple super easy I'm going to give you a few different techniques that you can use with the curves and I'm also going to show you how to color grade using curves as well so if you came to see all that and see how you can create images like this just for that one adjustment through curves let's dive right in so on the left-hand side here we've got the point here which controls the blacks so if I were to start bringing this up we see we start to Bryson the image from the Black Point up conversely if we grab the other side that's the white point so we can darken it by bringing that down in the middle of the curve that is the distribution of all the luminosity values how bright the bright parts through the image so if I click on here and drag up we're gonna brighten the image because we're bringing all of those values up if I click and bring it down we're going to darken the whole image as well so by putting points in different areas and manipulating the curve we can actually control the look of our image and we can do that on a skit on the sense of the luminosity itself but then we can also dive in to the individual channels and that's where we can actually create the color toning looks and the color grading to really give our image a finished look so the first thing we're going to look at is what's called an s-curve and that is brilliant for introducing contrast into your image not just contrast with the slider but something that we can actually have more accurate control over so we can really get in there and specific with the image so to do that we're gonna add three points now what I recommend you do is actually hold the Alt key and click one two three points equal distances one on 25% one at fifty and one at 75% or there and there abouts and from there we're going to bring down the bottom point and that's going to darken the shadows and at the moment nothing's happened to the highlights but what we can do is now bring that point up and we've added an s-curve and that has added contrast so if we turn that off and on you can see just how much pop that gives us now with a lot of images adding some contrast it really helps bring the image to life so that's a great technique second thing we can do with the curve is actually the opposite of the s-curve and do a reverse s and that's actually gonna reduce contrast so let's have a look at that let's do the same again I'll hold the Alt key and click three points why we hold the Alt key is so that we're not actually shifting the curve when we click these points that constrains it to an the exact position of the curve when we were putting the points on there so if we'd already done something crazy with our curve like this and we want to add another point if you click you start moving the curve as soon as you've clicked or you have the ability to do that which might not be a good thing so if you hold the Alt key those points that you're adding they're added to the current structure of the curve great thing to know so the Alt key great little tip so we're gonna add three points and we go the opposite way to what we did for the contrast s curve so this time instead of going up where the highlights will come down and instead of down with the shadows we're going to go up and as you can see if we look at the before-and-after this time we've actually reduced the contrast and so we can really get specific and dial in exact amounts that we might want for our image the third thing we can do with the tone curve is we can actually create what's called an M curve and the concept behind an end curve is we're gonna lift the shadows and lift the highlights I personally don't use this too much because most the time when I'm doing those kind of adjustments that will actually be in the basic panel where I will use the shadow and the highlight sliders to control that however just to show you full thoroughness we can do that here so again one to three points holding the Alt key and leave the midpoint where it is and we're just gonna boost the shadows and we're gonna boost the highlights and this can really work well with some images so bear in mind and keep it in your toolbox so let's look at the before and the after and we've just brightened that up a wee bit the fourth thing I'd like to show you with the tone curve is just a simple brightening or darkening this as simple as this just put a point right in the middle and we're just gonna boost that up and we can brighten the image it's as simple as that it's a really nice way to brighten the image knowing that the white point and the black point are not shifting in any way the fifth thing I'd love to show you is something you're gonna recognize and I'm sure you're gonna want to know about and that's how to create a faded or vintage look now this look has been popular for so long now and it the trend is just not dying out so you need to put this one in your toolbox basically we are going to bring up the blacks because that's a big part of this this look is you do not have a true black point anymore your black is an off black gray is the new black so by bringing up this black point we can actually say there are no more blacks in our image so even even if we were to bring the blacks way down through our through our basic panel soon as we come into our tone curve we bring that up and there still is no black so you can create a crushed black look very easily using the tone curves you can also do the same bringing the whites down so for example if we put our image onto a white background so which is which is representative of what you might see on say a website or Facebook we can actually bring the whites down so it's not not as in-your-face and a lot of people like to push the blacks up bring the whites down but oftentimes that's not enough that's that's not quite the look so what do we do to bring it all together let's have a look at that now I'm gonna call this number 6 I'm not sure this really a six thing but this is more like bringing it all together so let's do a bit of a combo we're gonna take the vintage look that we were kind of working towards but I haven't quite perfected and combine that with what we've learnt with actually controlling the contrast with the s-curve so let me show you what I mean with that let's say we want to bring our black point up let's let's be quite aggressive with that so that we really see what's going on we're going to bring the black point up we're gonna shift the white down just ever so slightly I don't I don't like to do that too much otherwise the image to me just starts to look too washed out but now I'm gonna put some control points on so I'm gonna hold the Alt key again and I can put three points along this curve from here we're now going to create an s-curve so we can bring this one down we can bring this up and now we've added contrast yet still faded the image and I just think this is a really really beautiful look once we can combine that without color grading we're on our way to creating some really really unique and beautiful images so let's just have a really quick look at the before and after here is our original before image here's our after if we feel like we might want to brighten it up just slightly we can grab that midpoint and start to shift that up if we feel like the white or the highlights of peaking just a little bit too much we can ease those off a little bit and this is where the creativity really comes in you might want to add an additional point and just really have those those blacks kind of just crush out there they call it crushing the blacks when you're doing things like that I'm not really one for what the terminology is I just know what I like to look at good so let's say we're happy with that and we can go looking at before and and after before after if we put it back onto our black screen here we can see before and after and here you can really see if you look down here where we've got the the rocks meeting the black there you can see there just are no blacks anymore on hey guys I really hope this video is of help to you if it is I would love it if you would actually help me just by hitting the like button or even the subscribe if you would like to see more videos like this and if you do want to see more videos like this let me know what and I'll be happy to look at making something specifically for you thanks guys and that's just a really nice look if you combine that with adding a bit of grain through lightroom just gorgeous but this is all just about tone curves so let's dive into the next thing the seventh seventh we're gonna look at here is color grading within the tone curve palette here if we click on the RGB tab that gives us access to our red green and blue channels from there we can actually control in the same way we're controlling the overall luminosity we can now actually control how much red green and blue are in the image so if I grab a point and just drag it up you'll see I'm introducing red when go to the extreme taking away red or actually the better way that I like to think of it is actually introducing the opposite of red and which in computer color terminology is cyan and if we look at the green slider we can introduce green or take it away which is the same as adding magenta and by doing this that with blue we can see we can add blue in or we can take it away which is the same as adding in yellow to the image so really quick and easy thing that I like to do with for instance the blue the blue curve is to grab the top point and bring that down and that is going to bring yellows into our highlights I like to balance that complement it by adding Blues into the shadow and if we turn that off and on you can see not only have we added contrast contrast to our image faded the image but now we've also added a color tone so is that simple just using the tone curve I've done nothing more than pull this down shift that up and add this tone curve which starting to look a little more complicated but basically that's just an S curve with the tail-end pushed up that's all it is so I've opened up another image of Sammy here and this image actually has some inherent problems that we can fix with the tone curve so let's take a look at what exactly what we could do with that first of all let me point out the issue which you can probably tell this image is washed out which may say that's absolutely fine it's heading towards that kind of vintage washed out look that we gave this image anyway however if you want it to be accurate about it what we can do is actually just clip or bring the black point over to meet the bottom of the histogram where where data starts on the histogram we just bring that black point over and now we've got a true black point on the image we can check whether or not we've got a true true black point by putting this little warning mark up here and as we push over into blacks it just floods it with blue where you are actually creating a pure black so I'm happy with that point they're just starting to hit black from there we've got our options where we create the s-curve for contrast a reverse s-curve to reduce contrast or an EM curve so if I put three points into our curve we could look at raising the highlights so we're getting a little bit more boost into Sami skin beautiful we could even just lift those mid points I'm really liking that I just want to brighten that whole image I feel that's quite nice something like that and we need to make that decision do we want to bring the shadows down or do we actually want to introduce more detail to the shadows in this case I quite like a little bit of detail in the shadows and just so we're head in the same direction of the other image we were working on what I might do is actually just bring these blacks up just have the black point come up and we'll forget about that whole clipping idea we'll just go for that more vintage look and now now we've shifted those up I feel like we can boost up the mid-tones even more that's it what it looks like on a white background yeah that's looking really nice let's see if we can even take yeah let's take those highlights even brighter really make those sing now the other thing we can we can do see how around the bottom of the dress that's getting really quite bright now I kind of feel like we're losing a bit of saturation it's going a little too bright what we can do is actually bring the top of the curve down just to protect those so if I flatten that curve out you can see if we push it up the dress is bleaching out there bring it down it just starts to protect the color toning there on the dress and the luminance of the dress and I quite like that that's beautiful so if we look at our before a very flat washed out image Sun flare coming into the lens not much contrast we've increased our contrast while still getting that beautiful crushed black look which isn't as Extreme as what we did on the other image but I really like that from there if we wanted to add some color toning we could so let's see here let's see let's add some some red and see what that looks like so we can just boost the Reds a little bit what if we bring the shadows are yet okay by putting s curves into the colors you're actually keeping complementary colors because obviously the red and cyan complementary colors you push up into the red with one if you pull down with the other control point you're introducing cyan into the shadows so that's quite a nice look there let's call that done before after before and after so as you can see guys curves a really powerful tool well worth learning so the principles that I've taught you today it's super simple right you've got your s curve to add contrast you can bring the shadow point the black point up so you can get more crushed vintage faded kind of look and then you can dial into the RGB the red green and blue channels and have a little tweak around with those just to get some really nice color toning looks I think part of the key is don't go to the extreme subtlety wins but I really hope you've learned something from this video if you have let me know what was most interesting thing to you what was most beneficial to you and if I have helped you I'd love it if you'd help me just by hitting that like button and hit me with a subscribe that would be awesome and leave me a comment below so thank you very much guys appreciate your time and I'll catch you in the next video Cheers [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Anthony Turnham

Views: 56,506

Keywords: tone curve, lightroom, tutorial, color grading, colour grading, colour toning, color toning, how to, Adobe, curves panel, develop module, photo editing, photo edit, model, model photography, beach photography, colour looks, photo tinting, photo toning, post production, curves

Id: KvW0RNhaNgg

Length: 17min 26sec (1046 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 29 2018