Levels vs Curves: A Photoshop Showdown
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- Опубліковано 26 лип 2024
- Which is a better tool, Levels or Curves? We break down what each tool does and explain which you should be using.
Have any questions? I have the answers! here on my FAQ page:
www.professionalphototips.com...
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Joshua Cripps is a full-time landscape photographer living near Yosemite National Park in California. His recent work includes the worldwide marketing campaign for the Nikon D750 camera.
For more landscape photography, tutorials, and workshops visit:
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www.SeaToSummitWorkshops.com
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All photos, text, and video are copyright Joshua Cripps. Stock images and sounds from Pond5.com. Any use without my express written permission is really not cool, man.
This is one of the best tutorials I have seen so far on Levels and Curves,
The most straight forward video I have seen on this topic! Thank you!!!
Josh, I must say that this is the first video that explains in "PLAIN ENGLISH" the difference between Levels vs Curves. Great job and hope to see more of the same.
Great video!! I truly appreciate this simple and succinct explanation!
KaransPotsAndGlass Great!
Thank you for the clear explanations in this video! I’m learning about histograms and similar functions in post for the first time and this was very helpful!
Excellent video! The best I've seen about curves!
I'm a beginner, this video is the best I've seen! straight forward,clear explanations of all the terms.
Superb and clear explanation!!
Love your channel! Super helpful!
Excellent video which clears so many confusions. Your logic behind use of Levels and Curves indeed makes me confident when and why to use Levels and Curves.
Thank you so much and I am sure others will definitely find this video helpful.
Clear concise and informative. Thanks
Your videos are the best. Keep up the good work.
Fantastic information
Super!
Thank you for the information.
Extremely useful! Thank you for this Tutorial!
Adam Marley You got it!
thank you for explaining, I was struggling with this in Ps and it explained a lot!
Thank you! Love the vids dude. Keep doin what you do best!
legoyokid1 Cheers! I'll definitely keep it up.
excellent tutorial, never truly understood curves until now!!!
Excellent !
thanks and it has make clear to me the difference and which way to use
Very helpful, thanks! Will try to use Curves from now on :)
Thanks, man, I learnt a lot. I really enjoyed the Flanders style greeting at the beginning! :)
Awesome!!!
great tutorial! thank you!
Chris S My pleasure.
Thanks very much.
Nice Job and very well done.
John Gilbert Thanks, John
Great video! this could be really useful for photo manipulation
Thank you!
Thank you! At last I understand the difference between curves and levels!
Beverly Evans Booyah!
thanks for sharing !!! really helpful
Giannos Menelaou Cool beans!
thanks for this video. Very useful.
Peter Svacho You are very welcome.
Thank you for this video
Thanks for the great vid! I always used Levels for contrast and curves for color, but I think I'm going to rethink that now. Thank you!
***** Cheers, Marc. Glad I could give you something to chew on!
When to use levels? I'm a professional graphic designer and I do have a very specific time I use levels. After I develop an image (often using curves) I have to press read my images, especially when the image will be printed with just black ink at a lower resolution. (Think of the author photo in the back of a novel, or to a greater extent a b/w newspaper image.) I'll use levels to limit the output, this keeps the shadows from filling in and the highlights from blowing out when printing on a press. Could I make this adjustment with a curves adjustment? Sure, but in this situation levels is the perfect simple tool for the job, no fuss no muss. So levels has its place, it's just not in a photographer's normal work flow.
Mark Sorenson Mark! Excellent stuff! Thanks so much for this great explanation of a perfect time to use the output levels, and the simple nature of Levels.
magnificent tutorial! clear and so free of waffle, thanks a lot.
sold me totally. gonna sell my house and all its contents for a week with Curves :)
I love Love LOVE this video!!!! It was so informative and in detail I also Greatly appreiciate the step by step process and explanation of everything. I'm VERY new to PS and am trying to lern all I can about the program.
Do you have a seperate video on the layers and masks?
THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND CONSIDERATION.
Randomly stumbled upon this, very good explanation of the difference - cheers!
MrTobbsie Booyah!
Thank you so much! :-)
Thanks for sharing. I understand better now about curve.
Parwez Sultani Great, glad I could help!
Levels is a quick easy way to bring more blacks and whites into an image channel. especially when creating a contrast mask for blending images.
Thank you for another great video very informative. It would be great to see a video on preparing a photo for print e.g resizing sharpening lightening etc as simple as it seems I found it to be one of the most confusing processes! getting the right ratios etc can be very confusing. Thanks again :)
Just the other day I was wondering what the difference levels and curves was, now I know thanks josh. I will definitely be trying curves out more often.
mebepeeblee Hmmm, I thought I felt a mystic force in the universe telling me to make this vid!
.. finally ....I can see why I should be using curves - thanks
Good tut
G ramps King Tut's lesser known cousin, Good Tut? :) Thanks!
As usual excellent tutorial Josh!... It would be nice to see a tutorial on focus stacking workflow for maximum depth of field. There are many on UA-cam but they're not clear and concise... Cheers.
Ozturk Aker Thanks, Ozturk. And great suggestion. It's definitely on my list!
I used to use Levels 99% of the time but now Curves is on my radar. What do you suggest with the scans I get where the black and white points are not at 0 and 255. I have been dragging them to match the histogram. Seems with your method that is no longer needed. thanks
fantastic tutorial. really explains the benefits of curves over levels.
Was this shot at Sealy Tarns in Mt Cook National Park?
Does 'tonecurves' in LR has the same working ? As Curves offcourse :).
I'm new to photography and reccetnly bought a Nikon D3300, with the kit, f/3.5-5.6 lens. Was shooting the other day using the range of f/stop values then came to use it today and it won't let me past f/4. If anyone could help that would be great.
Thanks great explanation I use Levels to set my white and black point then go to Curves to adjust contrastis this sound workflow?
Dallas Thomas If it works for you then it's sound. You just want to make sure you are not adjusting your white and black points to a level where you start clipping image data.
Professional Photography Tips Thanks
thanks for the tips josh. wasnt aware i could do everything in curves that levels does. no more levels for me :) clipping the edges is fine though if u have no data on either side. u can increase the contrast without losing data if there is no data. still switching to curves though!
Steven Davis Word up, Steve! Yup, pulling in the B&W points is totally fine when you're not clipping. Otherwise the Curves is the silky smooth way to to contrast.
i tried it out on my newest shot...
500px.com/photo/116304641/keeping-watch-by-steven-davis?from=user_library
worked like a charm. combining luminosity masks with the little hand dragger option really works well.
Steven Davis Right on, glad to hear it! Photo came out sweet!
Professional Photography Tips thanks bro :)
Hi can you make vector vexel? pleaseee....
Thanks for the video, helped explain some things. You mentioned always editing in 16-bit. For some tasks Photoshop Elements makes me convert to 8 bit, is the full version of Photoshop the same in that regard?
John E John, I'm not aware of anything in Photoshop that forces you to convert to 8-bit. It might be practical to do so for computer-intensive tasks like stitching large panos, but you are not forced to do so.
Thanks for the reply, makes my decision to upgrade to Photoshop CC even easier.
Great video! Can you please make a video where you replace the clouds in the image of your video here? I miss the video where you can see that you replace the clouds in the sky and in the water so that it fits together
Michal Juul Thanks for the suggestion. I'll add it to the list.
awesome man! wow. Its weird. I always knew on some level that levels was a simplified version of curves, but I kept thinking... 'there must be something specifically useful about levels' so I kept using it. But now... time to never use levels again. Thanks for clearing it up.
TheAngryCanary Well, there's nothing wrong with Levels for certain tasks, like setting black and white points for a low-contrast image, but Curves is just so much more robust. Glad I could help explain the difference!
what's posturization? " 17:21
I have a question what is the name of the photoshop that you use?
Marilena Papargiri Hi Marilena, this was Photoshop CC 2015.
Thank you!!!
it's great tutorial, thank you
Josh. My first and only(so far) p&s broke. I need help.
Rowel Buan Hmm, I'm not sure what help you're looking for but it sounds like you need to either repair or replace your camera.
I like ur video! But if u make it shorter, I will like it more~
Speak faster~