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Creative Coloring with Curves

Lesson 9 from: Beginner Color Toning in Photoshop

Khara Plicanic

Creative Coloring with Curves

Lesson 9 from: Beginner Color Toning in Photoshop

Khara Plicanic

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Lesson Info

9. Creative Coloring with Curves

Lesson Info

Creative Coloring with Curves

I'll show you quickly curves really quickly just because some people really like curves, they are. It is more complicated way to work with color and tones and stuff. But then also, you have the actions work and give you a little preview of that because they're really they're really fun. Um, here's the picture I was going to show you with curves. Okay, so curves of another adjustment that you can do up here it went. Adjustments, curves, although I just feel like the Internet is home screaming. If I do that, so yes, we'll do it in an adjustment layer everybody, But you can do it here. And if I just I'm doing something quick like I know exactly what I want. Sometimes I do it this way because it's a keyboard shortcut. But for the sake of good best practices will go over here because this is really a best practice. Will pull up curve, and we'll just pull this appear so we can see. So here is our curves and curves is to me I think of it like a three d version of levels, which I don't know if...

that means anything to anyone but I think that Colin Smith taught a curve course here, a creative life during Photoshopped Week a couple years ago, and I haven't seen it. But I've seen some of Collins curve teachings, and he's so good explaining curves. So I don't think I could even top that. He's really good. But it to me is like a three d level so you can see the hissed a gram here in the background. And you should know that in curves like with levels, you have a composite channel that you can adjust or you can actually go in and adjust the individual RGB channel. Um, or seeing like a what have you. So let's say that this image here, maybe I want to add, sort of, ah, blew cool tone to it. Just a subtle one. It's really easy to dio in Curve. I would just go to the Blue Channel because that's where the blue is, and I'm gonna take this point right here and just drag it upwards and you see what it's doing because this is the shadow area, because again, shadows are on the left and Photoshopped when we depict it linearly, the shadows are on the left and the highlights are over here. So this is a shadow point on what I'm doing to the Blue Channel is within the Blue Channel. I'm basically reassigning the sham, the shadows. So instead of starting with nice, rich shadows, they're starting up here. See the scale that runs along here. This is, um this is what we have currently this is what I'm adjusting to. So I'm bright ning the shadows in the Blue Channel and by doing it on Lee in the Blue Channel excuse the color and gives me the nice little blue treatment. So I like how that looks. I think it adds sort of Ah, I don't know fantasy feeling to an image. So I probably happy with just this. It's really simple little adjustment. I can close this panel and if we want to see the before and after we can do that, So it's pretty subtle again. You could try, you know, doing a color fill and playing with the blend modes to there. It's just there's no one right or wrong. It's whatever makes sense to you. So you feel like you can achieve whatever it is that you're looking for that also works even on a black and white image. So here's another image. Um, where I'm gonna go to do the same thing. So we'll come over here and pull up curves again and again. If I want to add a blue tint to this, I'm gonna go to the Blue Channel and I'm gonna grab right here and just pole straight up, and it just gives it a nice little. Now it's a cool black and white not a warm, lacking way, but a cool Oh, maybe we want a different you know, maybe I want to go in here to the Red Channel and make it a little warmer. You know, you can really experiment with this stuff. Um, curves are fun like that, but I'm a big fan of the blue. The blue effects ever so slightly. OK, so and again when you're done with the adjustment. I always like to close the properties panel, but I tuck it in. You guys know you can move your panels all around, right? So that's really handy. Um, I usually have my layers open over here cause you pretty much always need layers and then the other ones, I just kind of pop open as I need

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

How To Install Actions in Photoshop
Nine Color Toning Actions

Ratings and Reviews

Sara C. Madsen
 

Nice little class. Very basic. Perfect for beginners.

a Creativelive Student
 

Very, very basic. Strictly for beginners.

user-9f5c01
 

Khara is very personable and engaging. But I do think people should know this is NOT a color CORRECTION workshop. This is a basic course in that it provides a very brief overview of the pshop functions that can contribute to color manipulation. She does go most into gradient maps.

Student Work

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