The Power of "Horizontal Curve" in Photoshop!

have you ever heard about the straight curve not the usual diagonal just like this well today is the day today I'm gonna show you how you can control the amount of light of any area that you pick in the most natural way possible without even touching the colors all by using the horizontal or the straight curve technique it's amazing so without any further ado let's get started [Music] so here we again in the mysterious world of Photoshop never go ahead and download this photo or any other photos shown in the tutorial you know the dude check the links in the description first of all let me show you how to do it you gotta be talking about how it works later first let's do it create a hue/saturation adjustment layer first click on the adjustment layer icon and then choose hue/saturation now take the saturation all the way to the left making it black and white now change the blend mode of the hue/saturation adjustment layer from normal to soft light just like so now you know curse is my favourite adjustment layer nothing goes without curves click on the adjustment like on and then choose curves now here's an important step click on this button create clipping mask button right over there it affects only the hue/saturation adjustment clip take the point on the extreme left to the middle just like so make sure the right hand side of the output is 128 take this point as well the extreme right to the middle or you can simply type in 128 in the output just like so now have a look at this this is interesting even if I turn off the hue/saturation adjustment layer it's the same image even if I turn it on it's the exact same thing right so if I come back to the curves properties if it's not open for you you can just double click on the symbol to open up the properties of the curse for example you want to brighten this area let's just zoom in famous you want to brighten this area you could select the hand tool right over there click on this one and brighten it you want to donk in this area or maybe just bright in this area click and take it up just like so maybe you want to darken the extreme highlights again you just take it down like that let's have a look at it before and after the before and after doesn't matter but I want you to understand the concept over here here's the before here is the after we can easily control the brightness of any area that we wish you can also work this way just zoom in if you want to just decrease the brightness of the highlights so the right-hand side represent the highlights and the left-hand side represent the shadows you have talked about this in the curves adjustment layer guide you can watch it right here so if you want to just make the highlights darker you would just decrease the right-hand side you would take it down if you want to increase the shadows you would take it up maybe you want to do something with the mid-tones you want to just bump up the mid-tones as well so you can create complex curves over here and none of it none of it will affect the colors have a look at it here's the before here is the after colors are not affected at all this is super amazing let me show you another example so here we are now second example and if you think the process is too complicated and long just go to the description of the video and download in action it does it automatically for you so all you have to do is to go to window and then actions now I have made this action available for you to download just click on the horizontal curve action and play it it does everything for you let's close it all you have to do double click on the symbol of the curse adjustment layer and then start adjusting maybe you want to make the roads more shinier just zoom in with the help of the hand tool right over there just click and drag it up to make it brighter but other areas are becoming brighter as well you don't want that to happen you want to darken this area so click and drag it down just like so as easy as that I have a look at the before and after none of the colors have been affected so here is the before let me just put it somewhere all right so here is the before and here is the after you can also mask it if you want to click on the mask maybe you want to create a gradient so I'll choose a gradient and I'll choose this gradient right over there it creates a gradient in the middle click on that one and maybe just like this or let's drag it like that so it's just in the middle a little bit of it add some brightness to the sky and shine on the roads isn't that amazing now it's done you can stop watching the video right now that's how to do it I've given you the action and that's it but if you really want to learn how it works and understand the concept behind it keep watching because here's the thing once you understand the concepts you can come up with thousand tricks of your own and that's how I've come up with a lot of videos like that just keep it a secret alright so here is how it works we need to first of all understand the concept of soft light and overlay blend modes have a look at this if I create a new layer if I take the brush all right and if I take 50% gray as the foreground color so let's take eight zero eight zero eight zero hex code for 50% gray here okay and if I paint something right over here okay and if I change the blend mode from normal to overlay it becomes absolutely invisible even if I choose soft light it is invisible right now let's take it back to normal now if I put it back to black and let's say I decrease the flow to somewhere around 11% and if I start painting like this just like that all right and change the blend mode back again from normal to overlay have a look at this everything which was 50% gray just vanished have a look at this again if I change the blend mode back to normal and I paint with white right which is brighter than 50% gray just like that and change the blend mode to overlay back again gray hides but let me show you something interesting everything that was brighter than gray those areas have become brighter everything that was darker than 50% gray those areas have become darker let me make it more evident for you if I create a gradient create a new layer and simply create a gradient just like this right and in this gradient at the top we have white and at the bottom we have black if I change the blend mode from normal to overlay let's have a look at this the middle will be normal but look at the top the top has been brightened and the bottom has been darkened so 50% gray will hide anything which is brighter than 50% great those areas will be brightened anything which is darker than 50% great those areas will be darkened so this is how it works but if we can use this concept to control the brightness of different areas of the image I think we can let's start by making a copy of the background layer select the background land then press ctrl or command J first of all we don't want to change the colors so let's desaturate it go to image adjustments and then desaturate so this does not have any colors now if I change the blend mode from normal to overlay it's kind of making the darks very dark and the brights Fairey bright is there a way in which I can make this absolutely gray to begin with well there is let me show you how if I change the blend mode back to normal again and if I create a curves adjustment layer click on that just like on and then choose curves now we want the curves adjustment layer to only affect this layer which is layer 1 so click on this button which is create clipping mask button or you can simply hold the alt or option and click on the line between these two layers now if you take the extreme left point up the shadows become brightened right take it more up the shadows become absolutely brightened do the mirror because you want to make it gray if you also want to make the highlights gray you bring the highlights down so you take the shadows up to make it gray you take the highlights down to make it gray so once you bring it at 128 exact position let me just dial it in make sure this is 128 as well have a look it's absolutely great so when there is something which is absolutely grey and we change the blend mode to soft light what will happen it will completely hide now let's change it back to normal and let's see what happens when we change the curves so here we are in the curves suppose we want to make the highlights a little brighter so when we do something like this when we take it up and then we take the shadows down look at how it's creating a light map which if we change the blend mode to soft light well directly affect the light of that particular area so that my friend is how it works if you want to make the effect more extreme you can also choose overlay it just makes it more extreme now you can do the same thing you'll have to be more careful with this because it's not as subtle as soft light now you might be wondering why the heck did I use hue saturation instead of a layer copy here's why let's have a look at this for example you made some changes like this made some extreme changes way and you made a copy of the background layer control or command J and you changed something in this may be a liquify so go to filter liquify and let's say you moved a couple stuff let's say you just nudged her a little bit maybe you nudged this thing a little inside but the forward warp tool right over then let's make it bigger like that you changed a couple things and you hit OK now there will be an issue have a look at this see this thing is coming from that copy right the copy is not changing according to the changes I make below it we want it to be non-destructive right anything we do we have to just make a copy again create a curves adjustment layer again that will be hectic so instead of making a copy we create a hue/saturation adjustment layer here is why let's delete all of these if we simply create a hue/saturation adjustment layer alright and if we change the blend mode and this is just for demonstration if we change the blend mode to let's say multiply right have a look at the kind of look it's creating if I just turn it off if I just simply make a copy of this and change the blend mode to multiply it's the exact same look isn't it which teaches us that these adjustment layers create a virtual copy inside them and then they adjust those virtual copies so if we change the layers beneath an adjustment layer it keeps on changing so why not create a hue/saturation adjustment layer which will create a virtual copy of it and also we can decrease the saturation at the same time right so let's change the blend mode back to soft light and then we do the usual stuff curves adjustment layer clipping mask and bring it to the middle just like that and you can adjust it in any which way you want brighten up the highlights darken the shadows and maybe brighten up the extreme shadows just like that have a look at this this is amazing so here is the before here's the after so you can mold it any which way you want and it's always gonna be subtle if you use soft light so that's how my friend you can use the straight curve technique and the concept behind it if you really want to do it fast make sure to download the action don't forget about it just a quick little recap only have to do is to create a hue/saturation adjustment clip take the saturation to minus hundred change the blend mode of the hue/saturation adjustment layer to soft light create a curves adjustment layer on top of it create a clipping mask make sure the curves adjustment layer just affects the hue/saturation adjustment layer and then in the curves properties make it straight make the curves horizontal and then you can just adjust the highlights shadows and mid-tones right side highlights left side shadows I hope I'm making sense of what I'm talking about and if I am you make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe bring the person that you my friend don't miss any other feature tip trick or a tutorial I would like to take this moment to thank all these nice and amazing people who are supporting this channel on patreon and helping keep pigs in perfect free for everybody forever thank you so much for all your support thank you for watching I'll see you guys my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] you [Music]

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 796,304

Keywords: horizontal curve, retouching, contrast, highlights, shadows, curves in photoshop, advanced photoshop techniques, hue/saturation, photoshop tips and tricks, curves adjustment layer, adobe, tutorial, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: LfrerC80h84

Length: 13min 2sec (782 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 22 2018