Basic Tonal Adjustments/Tone Curve/Tone Curve Subtleties

[KED]

I am sure this has been discussed before, either here or elsewhere, so I am really requesting direction to a thread or other resource rather than new information. I am trying to grasp the distinction between the basic tonal adjustments -- E, R, FL & B in Basic relative to the Tone Curve adjustments. And then the next level down, what is happening and why one wants it to happen when one adjusts the bottom sliders in Tone Curve to "widen" various ranges.

BTW, I do sports photography primarily, shooting lots of images at any one event, and do not need to be "perfect" as in, say, portraiture. Still, in the spirit of making my shots all that they can be, I am grateful for your input.

 

[rcannonp]

Think of it like painting. You start with a wide brush to rough in the picture and then you move to finer brushes to refine the details.

Use the Basic settings to set your white and black points and general midtone levels. When you have those set move to the tone curves. The diagrams in the TC panel will help you determine how to use the settings. The histogram shows you the distribution of the values in your image. You can use the sliders to focus the adjustments of the parametric curves and use the histogram as a guide for where you might want to set them. I've attached a screenshot of the TC panel where I focused the lower midtones around the peak in the histogram. For this image, I wanted the shadows to go darker, but the lower mids were getting muddy. I focused the Darks slider around that area using the histogram(and my eyes) as a guide and bumped them up a little bit.

I hope this helps at all.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

If you slightly more intuitive control over the Tone Curve, try the TAT tool in the top left of that panel. You float over an area of the image and use the up/down arrows and it adjusts that area of the curve for you.

 

[KED]

Think of it like painting. You start with a wide brush to rough in the picture and then you move to finer brushes to refine the details.

Use the Basic settings to set you white and black points and general midtone levels. When you have those set move to the tone curves. The diagrams in the TC panel will help you determine how to use the settings. The histogram shows you the distribution of the values in your image. You can use the sliders to focus the adjustments of the parametric curves and use the histogram as a guide for where you might want to set them. I've attached a screenshot of the TC panel where I focused the lower midtones around the peak in the histogram. For this image, I wanted the shadows to go darker, but the lower mids were getting muddy. I focused the Darks slider around that area using the histogram(and my eyes) as a guide and bumped them up a little bit.

I hope this helps at all.

It does -- thank you.

 

[KED]

If you slightly more intuitive control over the Tone Curve, try the TAT tool in the top left of that panel. You float over an area of the image and use the up/down arrows and it adjusts that area of the curve for you.

I like that tool -- it's very functional in its own right, but I bet if I played with it while watching its effect on the tone curve I'd learn a lot about the tone curve itself. I'm putting that on my "to do" list.

 

[Mark Sirota]

If you slightly more intuitive control over the Tone Curve, try the TAT tool in the top left of that panel. You float over an area of the image and use the up/down arrows and it adjusts that area of the curve for you.

Interesting. I'm a TAT junkie, but I don't use it that way.

I click and drag (up or down) a spot on the image. I like the idea of hovering better, because my way makes it hard to click that same spot again (not a problem for the tone curve, but can be an issue for other TATs). I'll work on retraining my fingers and see how that works out for me.

 

[KED]

If you slightly more intuitive control over the Tone Curve, try the TAT tool in the top left of that panel. You float over an area of the image and use the up/down arrows and it adjusts that area of the curve for you.

Update: I had excellent results using the combination of Auto Tone and the tone curve TAT on a lacrosse shoot this weekend.

But I remain curious: what is the effect of moving the bottom sliders?

 

[DonRicklin]

Widening or narrowing the ranges in which the tonal sliders work. Give them a try and see.

They are set at 25, 5' and 75 % marks. You can move them left or right. Like other sliders if you double click the tab you will reset it.

Don