Hey, guys! Long time no… blog? I’m Sarah from Arrow & Apple, and it’s great to be back around on ABM. I’m pumped to share with you guys a little bit about the curves tool in the A Color Story app! I love the curves tool (you’d be hard-pressed to find a photographer who doesn’t) because it gives you a lot more control in editing the tones of your image and getting each image looking JUST right.
You might be asking yourself, how is this different from using the exposure tool? Well with curves, you can choose one part of the image to change without affecting the rest of it! If you want to make your highlights brighter without making your shadows brighter, you can do that. Not only can you adjust exposure, but within the curves, you can boost contrast and change your color tones as well! You can create rich, red shadows, or a bright and cool image. There’s a lot you can do to come up with a look that’s just your own. Let’s get started – here’s a quick video to walk you through it!
Just remember – anytime you pull a point down, it’ll get darker. And pulling a point up makes that part lighter! Your points on the curve are the part of the photo you want to manipulate. So let’s say you want to just make your shadows lighter without really affecting the whole image – take the shadow point (bottom left!) and pull it up. Make sense? So in the photo below, my original photo seemed a little too light and slightly too blue to begin with. I used the curves tool to make it darker and give it more contrast by pulling the line down, and creating an S-curve (like we talked about in the video). After that, I switched to the blue curve and pulled the curve line down in order to bring a lot more warmth to the photo. It looks so much better and these are just minor changes!
I hope that helps make it a little more clear for those of you who have never used curves before! And for real, don’t be afraid to try crazy things with curves because the more you use it, the more you’ll get a feel for how to manipulate your curve to get the look you want! It’s kind of like learning to read music – a little intimidating at first, right? But once you learn, you can sit down at a piano and play the song you want. 🙂 Let me know in the comments if you have any questions, and I’ll continue to share my favorite photo editing tips over on my Instagram!! xo – Sarah
Hey, guys! Long time no… blog? I’m Sarah from Arrow & Apple, and it’s great to be back around on ABM. I’m pumped to share with you guys a little bit about the curves tool in the A Color Story app! I love the curves tool (you’d be hard-pressed to find a photographer who doesn’t) because it gives you a lot more control in editing the tones of your image and getting each image looking JUST right.
You might be asking yourself, how is this different from using the exposure tool? Well with curves, you can choose one part of the image to change without affecting the rest of it! If you want to make your highlights brighter without making your shadows brighter, you can do that. Not only can you adjust exposure, but within the curves, you can boost contrast and change your color tones as well! You can create rich, red shadows, or a bright and cool image. There’s a lot you can do to come up with a look that’s just your own. Let’s get started – here’s a quick video to walk you through it!
Just remember – anytime you pull a point down, it’ll get darker. And pulling a point up makes that part lighter! Your points on the curve are the part of the photo you want to manipulate. So let’s say you want to just make your shadows lighter without really affecting the whole image – take the shadow point (bottom left!) and pull it up. Make sense? So in the photo below, my original photo seemed a little too light and slightly too blue to begin with. I used the curves tool to make it darker and give it more contrast by pulling the line down, and creating an S-curve (like we talked about in the video). After that, I switched to the blue curve and pulled the curve line down in order to bring a lot more warmth to the photo. It looks so much better and these are just minor changes!
I hope that helps make it a little more clear for those of you who have never used curves before! And for real, don’t be afraid to try crazy things with curves because the more you use it, the more you’ll get a feel for how to manipulate your curve to get the look you want! It’s kind of like learning to read music – a little intimidating at first, right? But once you learn, you can sit down at a piano and play the song you want. 🙂 Let me know in the comments if you have any questions, and I’ll continue to share my favorite photo editing tips over on my Instagram!! xo – Sarah
