Inside Photoshop® CS

Using Curves and Adjustment Layers

Curves is Photoshop's most powerful color adjusting tool. In fact, the Curves tool is not exclusive to Photoshop. Most scanning software includes Curves as one of the optional color adjusting commands. So, what you learn here you can take to your favorite scanner's interface.

Curves and Adjustment Layers are a powerful duo in your color-correcting adventures. Curves provides unmatched precision for color correcting. And Adjustment Layers enable you to change your settings anytime and forever without affecting the image's original pixels.

Working with the Curves Dialog Box

Let's look at the Curves dialog box. At the left in Figure 12.1, you can see its default setup. The default grid within this dialog box has ...