Photographer Conner Turmon has put together a quick video tutorial that will get you up to speed on using the RGB tone curves to post-process your photos in either Lightroom or Photoshop (although this info will work with any photo editing program that gives you access to the tone curve).
The video will only take up eight minutes of your time, so definitely give it a go if you want to see tone curve editing in action, but the key takeaways can be summarized in two points:
1. Know your color wheel. This way, you understand what tones you`re `adding` and `subtracting` when you pull or push any particular combination of Red, Blue and Green.
and
2. Focus only on the area you`re editing. If you`re editing in the shadows, look only at the shadows while you`re doing it; if you`re editing the highlights, same thing, look only at the highlights.
As far as how you should approach each individual photo, Turmon shared a solid tip on Reddit:
I find it super helpful to either do complementary colors (e.g., Purple-Yellow, Red-Green, Blue-Orange) or emulate a film type that you like! For example, Fuji is notorious for green shadows and blue highlights (at least I think).
Another good tip: download photographs you like (tone-wise), pull them into Photoshop, and use the eye dropper tool to inspect the shadows, midtones, and highlights to see how they`ve been edited. This will give you a better idea of how you might approach editing your own work.
But before you do any of that, check out the video above to get a quick breakdown of how RGB curves work; and if you like what you see, check out Turmon`s website, Instagram, and YouTube channel for more.
|
