Adobe Camera RAW for Beginners: Tone Curve
videos

Adobe Camera RAW for Beginners: Tone Curve

on Mar 20th 2010 with 14 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Program: Adobe Camera RAW
  • Difficulty: Intermediate
  • Completion Time: 30 Minutes
This entry is part 5 of 8 in the Camera RAW for Beginners Session
« PreviousNext »

In this video tutorial we will look at the Tone Curve tool and put it to work. We’ll be focusing on the Parametric and Point areas of the Tone Curve, and using various photos to explain the effect they can have.

Watch the Video

Video Details

The Tone Curve is broken down into two different tabs. The Parametric area allows you to make quick adjustments to the overall tone, while the Point area allows for greater and more customized tone adjustments.

Picture 1

In this picture by photographer Valerie Robinson we use the parametric tone tab to make changes to the highlights and lower the shadows.

Picture 2

In this photo we use the point curve to really pull out the highlights and midtones and bring in some darker shadows as well.

The tone tool can be used along with the basic adjustments to really improve the look of your photos.

Travis King is KingDog on Photodune
Tags: Videos
 
Enjoyed this Post?

Subscribe to our RSS Feed, Follow us on Twitter or simply recommend us to friends and colleagues!

By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

Travis King is a Canadian freelance designer, photographer, and Japan travel blogger.  

Plus Premium
 
 
  • http://baffleinc.com/ Harley

    That second photo just convinced me to start shooting in raw.

  • Frederik

    .RAW is a must, wouldn’t ever shoot in another format.

    • Dario

      Yep! That’s pretty much a given nowa days…

      • Chris

        And yet you know what’s funny? I do contract photography for a large sports photography website and my girlfriend is a professional photographer so we both know a thing or two about how photography stuff works.

        My gf recently talked to a local ‘professional’ who was looking for pro contractors to supplement her team. The local pro, during the interview, asked for top-notch professionals to work with her, people that would only shoot the best quality photos with the best quality gear.

        And guess what? The person hiring uses a single camera that’s at least 6 years old and shoots JPG. Yes, you read it right – the pro looking to hire top-notch professionals to work with her shoots JPG.

        That was a bit of a WTF moment for me … snobby maybe, but a surprise nonetheless.

  • http://essinger.zenfolio.com/ Ralph Essinger

    Thanks for the great post. I’ve goofed around with tone curves not knowing exactly what I was doing but just watching the changes. I would only sometimes get to the look I was after but not know how I got there; totally inefficient. This has made it much more clear; the ctrl/command selection was a huge point!

    Thanks!

  • http://deweyhulsey.com Dewey

    I realize that shooting in RAW gives you more flexibility when messing with curves and exposure adjustments, but quite honestly, I have been shooting in JPEG for file size reasons and I make these same adjustments to all of my photos with very pleasing results. Shooting in RAW is obviously the most lossless way to take photographs, but that’s not to say that you can not do these adjustments otherwise.

    • http://tmtke.blogspot.com tmt

      Yes, you can do it in JPEG, but in RAW you have a much higher dynamic image (12 or 14 bits per channel, depending on camera model), which results in better color/tone reproduction. JPEG is only 8 bits per channel, and if you editing tones and this and that, the results can be disappointing – far less colors, flattened tones, etc.

  • http://www.gary.klepticsy.com gary

    Raw is simply the best way to boost the levels of any photo… using a jpg file format you can get similar results with in standard photoshop, but it is true that it will have more of a damaging effect on the pixels than just doing it in RAW format…

  • http://ddjphotoshop.blogspot.com Zabava

    Nice tutorial thank you for sharing!

  • jamel

    how to change a jpeg to a raw file?

  • Alan

    Why did you not include some info on the sliders at the base of the parametric curve graph….not the highlight/lights/darks/shadows sliders….but the ones just above it???

    What do those do?

  • http://www.gabrielmeono.com Gabriel Meono

    1) Shoot in Raw, edit in Adobe Camera Raw.
    2) Open as an object in Adobe Photoshop
    3) Switch to Lab Color mode.
    4) Adjust curves, smart sharpen or high pass if needed, use median to remove color aberration.
    And clean up image with photoshop tools, for example if its a portrait, clean the skin a little bit.
    5) Go back to RGB mode, and export.

  • kinga

    PLEASE HELP.
    jUST YESTARDAY I WAS WATCHING THOSE VIDEO TUTORIALS AND THEY WERE GREAT. AND TODAY I CAN NOT WATCH THE VIDEOS, WHEN I CLICK IN THE PLAY ARROW IT TURN INTO A BLACK SCREEN AND ON THE BOTTOM THERE IS A SINHG “Advertisement playing” BUT NOTHING IS GOING ON , NO TUTORIAL, NO ADVERTISE!!.
    This tutorial is soo good I feel like I found a treasure and lost it very next day! It’s so frustrated. Please help me. How I can play those videos????

    Best regards
    KInga

  • http://www.LeicaLook.com LeicaLook

    Thanks for the info. I happen to like the look of the JPEGs coming from my Leica X1. That’s the dilemma I was having actually. I couldn’t find a way to get my raw files to look like the in-camera processed JPEGs. I’ve been working on a solution.

    I typically like to work in raw, but there’s something about how Leica renders colors and enhances contrast that I find really visually appealing.