Adobe Camera RAW for Beginners: Tone Curve
Tutorial Details
- Program: Adobe Camera RAW
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Completion Time: 30 Minutes
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.
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That second photo just convinced me to start shooting in raw.
.RAW is a must, wouldn’t ever shoot in another format.
Yep! That’s pretty much a given nowa days…
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!
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.
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.
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…
Nice tutorial thank you for sharing!
how to change a jpeg to a raw file?
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?