Levels curve on Photoshop

[with_brokenwings]

hi all

a newbie here..

to anyone who's pretty proficient in photoshop, how do you work the levels curve? i tried googling it but im still pretty blur..

can someone enlighten me?

thanks!
eugene

[bwilly]

Originally Posted by with_brokenwings hi all a newbie here.. to anyone who's pretty proficient in photoshop, how do you work the levels curve? i tried googling it but im still pretty blur.. can someone enlighten me? thanks! eugene

wat do u want to do actually? your qns is quite vauge to advise properly..
there is a auto level function, should solve all your problems, else try the curve which gives u more control.

[with_brokenwings]

essentially thats it. how does the curve give more control? what can be achieved using the curves? is it possible to get more saturated colours? or to desaturate? or get a sepia tone?

[waiaung]

If you want to get sepia or kinda desaturate... use Hue/Saturation... instead of curves

[theRBK]

curves allows you to adjust the contrast of the image either overall or only at certain brightness levels, allows you to adjust the overall colour of the image or only at certain brightness levels, allows you to adjust the white balance, the colour in highlight areas, midtones, shadows, all within the same dialog...and adjusting the area it affects by masking, it allows even closer control

for sepia and desaturate, its best not to think about curves...

[with_brokenwings]

oo.. thanks all!

theRBK:
hey.. care to elaborate? heh. i sorta wanna learn how to use the curves properly..

[Raptor1]

same here, i would like to learn how to make use of curves to edit my photos, anywhere i can read up on curves?

[unseen]

Actually, to the thread starter, I'm not sure you know what curves are for. Actually, do you even know what the image histogram and the levels tools are for? You need to know those to effectively know how to use curves.

Read the following..
MUST read this 1st..
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/levels.htm

Then you read this..
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...hop-curves.htm

Without know what histograms are, you will never be able to really use curves.

[with_brokenwings]

thanks for the info.. appreciate it.

[Parka]

The "Photoshop Studio Techniques" series of books have the best writeup on colour correction of all the books I've read.

It has detailed explanation on how the curves, levels and etc works, and WHY they work.

[Clown]

sounds like something i need to read. lolx

thanks for the recommendation!

[bwilly]

try it.. then u will know.. hehe.
seriously rather than reading n getting confuse, play with it.
Then look at the preview scene, gives u a better idea.