Morning Shizzy: Curves Flash Presentation
So I got up early, and decided to put together a Flash presentation on curves. To be honest, it’s one of those things that I always sorta understood, but explaining it can be very difficult. I should have tried something easier, like dunking a basketball (I’m 5’5) or finding a cure for some disease.
But it’s there. And in order to explain it, I used Lightroom. Yes, I used Lightroom to explain Photoshop curves. It makes sense if you watch the presentation. I also had to make this more like a video, with full motion captures in order to show the effect of curves on an image.
So, continue on to read about the making of the curves presentation, as well as the link to the presentation.
First, the reason I used Lightroom was simple: Tonal Curves can be adjusted by clicking on the image itself. I like this a lot, because it’s very hands on, while curves is not. If you have Lightroom and Photoshop, try this in Lightroom first, you’ll understand what I mean. In fact, if your workflow involves Lightroom, and it’s not out of place in your workflow, just use Tonal Curve adjustments there. It’s very slick.
Becuase of the full motion video, there were some glitches, display errors with the mouse cursor in Lightroom. I tried to edit the cursor but it just wasn’t happening. So I’ll let it be.
Explaining curves with Lightroom: Easy. Explaining it with words: Very difficult. I could have gone more in depth, but if I did that, I may as well break out the chalkboard and trigonometry examples. I tried to keep it more hands on, and very simple to see the cause/effect of it. I want to keep all my flash presentations light, and simple to take in. That’s also why I try to stick to one topic per presentation. If I tried to do a Photoshop presentation, It’d be the PShizzy.com equivalent of Stephen King’s “the Stand”
I’ve already got more ideas for presentations on the horizon. In fact, I have too many. But I’ll keep em coming
And here is the presentation:
Feel free to leave feedback, especially if you view the presentation. I’d love to know what I did right, what I did wrong, and how to improve that for future topics. I’d also like feedback and ideas for future topics.
Hey Max,
I would love to see a cut outs tutorial for posters. How to cut out sports players and get a sharp edge from a busy background.
ACK! I have to add one itsy bitsy thing to Max’s video tutorial about using curve in Photoshop: Learn non-destructive editing! Rather than change the curves on the image itself, create a curves adjustment layer by clicking on either that half-black, half-white circle at the bottom of the layers palette and select Curves, or Select: Layers->New Adjustment Layer->Curves….
Then, edit your curves. If after you’re done and have done other things you don’t like what you did, you can edit the original curves you put down by double-clicking on the layer icon or outright delete them by deleting the layer.
I’m sure Max knows this and uses this, but I feel that if you start off teaching people how to use adjustment layers, you get them on the right foot earlier.
John, you are correct about adjustment layers, they are great and non destructive. But I needed to do a video on adjustments first. If you don’t know adjustments, then you wouldn’t know to use adjustment layers.
Don’t worry though, layers and non destructive edits are on the “to do” list.
Max,
great video on Curves, the presentation was a little rough around the edges with the actual editing of the video but the information is very helpful. Reading the comment posted by John adds a great element to maintaing the original image within the file by adding layers.
Max,
Thanks for the tutorial. I’ve never really grasped the curves tool and have been meaning to learn it for a while now. This video was perfect. Incredibly helpful so I thank you again. I also have to agree with the previous posts about using adjustment layers. Besides non-destructive editing, they provide such an immense level of flexibility with the freedom to add masks, change blend modes, shift opacity, and make easy tweaks to the adjustment properties… I can’t think of a reason not to use them.
I swear ill make an adjustment layers post at some point, but we’re already on CS4! Also, to be honest, in my workflow, I don’t use curves a lot with color images. I have a separate way of toning my images. With B/W I love using curves, but I usually move things around a lot in the curves dialog, until I think I’m set. Adjustment layers have their place, and often that’s when you’re trying to adjust stuff for different outputs, or to have a client review and image that may require adjusting. But for the wire stuff I do, or events services, I rarely go back to the image. When I was in broadcast graphics though, I lived and died with adj layers. I have files with dozens of them.