Curves in the right places

Take control of your adjustments with curves

An alternative way to make selective tonal adjustments is to use the Curves panel. This places a straight diagonal line across the shot’s histogram graph. This undulating graph displays the strength and spread of the photo’s shadows, midtones and highlights. By dragging the diagonal line’s control points up or down (to create a curve), you can selectively lighten shadows and darken highlights on the underlying histogram. Here we’ve lightened underexposed shadows while darkening bright highlights using a classic s-shaped curve.