• Welcome to the Lightroom Queen Forums! We're a friendly bunch, so please feel free to register and join in the conversation. If you're not familiar with forums, you'll find step by step instructions on how to post your first thread under Help at the bottom of the page. You're also welcome to download our free Lightroom Quick Start eBooks and explore our other FAQ resources.
  • Are you using the cloud-based Lightroom apps for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Web? Then you'll love my book, Adobe Lightroom - Edit on the Go!

    You'll learn how to use the Lightroom cloud ecosystem to organize, edit and share your photos. You'll also come to understand the thought processes used by professional photographers when they're editing their own photos, so you can transform your photos quickly and easily. And better still, the eBooks are updated for every release, so it's always up to date.

Tone Curve and Sliders

Status
Not open for further replies.
N

newmoon

Member
Premium Cloud Member
Joined
May 16, 2011
Messages
81
Lightroom Version Number
5.2
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
Is there a way to ‘link’ the Tone Curve and the Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks sliders please?
So that when a slider is moved I can see the effect on the Tone Curve and vice versa?
Or am I misunderstanding how the sliders and curve are related?
I’ve wondered about this for years, I’ve been mainly a slider user but would like to try using the curve more.

Also I can’t see a way to use the Tone Curve in a masked area, the sliders are the only option. Is that correct (there isn’t a preference setting I’ve not seen)?

Thanks.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
No, there is no way to link them and it would not make sense to link them. If these were linked, then they would not be independent tools anymore. The tone curve would just be a visual representation of what other sliders do. That's not what the tone curve is for and not what it does. It's an independent tool.

The local adjustment tools (masks) do not include a tone curve.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Johan - thank you for your reply.

Before posting I'd been searching for clues without success but have just looked in Victoria's Edit like a Pro and found nine pages of explanation and examples on using curves. I should have thought to look here first.

The book also gives examples of different shaped curves which was something else I'd been searching for.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
The reason the sliders and Tone Curve can’t — and should not — be linked is that they do different, complementary things.

For example, suppose you want to lighten the shadows a little.

The Tone Curve, which is the older tool, is a simple shift. You drag up the lower quarter of the curve, so for example the tone at level 64 becomes level 72. Other than tones at similar levels adjusting to keep the curve smooth, nothing else happens. But a problem with the Tone Curve is that increasing contrast in one part of the curve requires a decrease in contrast in another part, which you can sort of address by adding more points, or (in Photoshop) manually layering multiple curve adjustments that are masked by tonal range, but because that’s complicated, modern photo editors added easier options like the sliders, so that…

If instead you increase the Shadows value, more things happen. Lightroom automatically masks off other ranges so that, for example, a Shadows increase degrades midtone and highlight contrast less than a Curves adjustment does. Also, additional processing helps recover/preserve details in boosted shadows. (Highlights does similar things that a highlight Tone Curve adjustment doesn’t, like recovering blown highlight detail.) So the sliders are not a simple shift like the Tone Curve; the sliders apply additional intelligent processing to preserve image quality. That’s why it’s usually better to use the sliders first, for the big moves. The Tone Curve is better for precisely refining contrast in specific small ranges.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top