Using curves for specific tonal areas

- The curve panel is an excellent place … to make adjustments to specific tones in an image; … that's the way I use it most often. … Now I'm going to show you that, but before I do, … if you don't use curve a lot, or curves a lot, … as I like to say, if you're not that familiar … with this panel, let me show you something. … If you go up here to where the three lines are, … and I'm going to show you a few presets. … And these are great for getting to know the panel … right here, so this one increased contrast, … and you can see what it did, it set five points, … which is a standard curve for doing image adjustment, … and it raised the tones in the middle values a bit, … and brought down the tones in the darker values a bit, … and that is a contrast adjustment for sure. … Let's look at another one: Midtones - Brighter. … So now on this curve, you see how it brought up … two midpoints, it raised them upwards, … and that brightened the midtones right here. … Let's do another one. … Midtones - Darker. …