You have learnt in a previous lesson how to adjust your brightness and contrast settings and sometimes you aren’t sure if maybe you are overdoing or underdoing the effect. This is where something like Curves can assist you in achieving a more natural and controlled adjustment.

Open you image in Photoshop and underneath your layers window select your little half black-half white circle.

In the list the pops up – select Curves.

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Clicking on the little arrow at the top menu in the curves control screen that pops up will give you a list of pre-set curves that you can apply to your image. As we mentioned above, perhaps you want to increase the contrast level of your image. Select either ‘increase contrast’, ‘medium contrast’ or ‘strong contrast’ depending on the effect you would like.

 

 

Once you click click OK you image will have been adjusted for you.

This is a really quick and easy way to adjust your contrast using pre-set guidelines.

Should you decide that you like the pre-set ‘strong contrast’ (or whatever you chose from the options list) but you want to tweek it a little further it is very easy to do.

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Double clicking the curves layer (on the little picture of a graph) in your layers menu will bring your curves control window back on your screen for further adjustments or changes.

 

 

  

 In your curves screen control you will see the graph showing your two lines. The straight grey line is your original image balance and the curved black line is your adjustment. Along the curved black line you will see little square anchor points. You can click on any of these anchor points and drag them further up or down depending of the change you want to make. Also – clicking anywhere on the curved line will create another anchor point for you to move around. Click ok when you are done. 

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