Adobe Lightroom has a multitude of useful editing tools, and the Tone Curve is one of them! Likely the tool that most new photographers avoid because it looks complicated, the Tone Curve is actually much simpler to use than you think. By mastering this nifty feature, you can improve your photo retouching tremendously.
Here is our ultimate guide to using the tone curve in Lightroom, making sure you are fluent in this editing tool!
What is a Tone Curve and What is It Used For?
Let’s start with the basics. A Tone Curve is a visual representation of all of the tones in your image. The term tone refers to the levels of brightness and darkness of your image. The scale goes from solid black to pure white, with shadows being dark tones and highlights being bright tones. Everything in the middle are midtones.
The Tone Curve tool allows you to adjust the brightness and darkness of your image in a more controlled way than using the exposure sliders in the Basics panel. The Shadows and Highlights sliders in the Basics panel are very specifically targeted to only that part of the image (when playing with the shadow slider, only the shadows will be impacted, and so forth). With the Tone Curve, you have much more realistic and precise control over the shadows, highlights, and midtones. You can anchor (or keep permanent) the midtones and then play with the shadows and highlights and leave the midtones untouched, for example.
How to Read a Tone Curve
Newer versions of Lightroom help you read the graph by offering helpful indications, but it’s still helpful to know what exactly you’re looking at.
The Tone Curve is a grayscale chart with a diagonal line running through it. Behind the diagonal line you will find dark indications that look like mountains or a mountain. Those dark mountains show you how many shadows and highlights already exist in your image and to what extent. The higher up the mountains go, the more prominent the tone and the lower it is the less prominent.
Everything to the left of the chart represents your shadows and everything to the right of your chart represents your highlights. Hanging out in the middle of the chart are your midtones.
How To Use the Tone Curve
Using the Tone Curve is fairly simple, but may take some experimenting to really get the hang of it!
That diagonal line that we mentioned above is how you adjust the tones. That is because this line represents the image in its current state, once the line stops being diagonal it begins to represent the image in the edited state. Just hover over any part of the line, left click to select, and drag the line up and down to reveal the effect. Pull the line up for a more lightened effect or pull the line down for a more darkened impact.
In new Lightroom updates, the program itself will tell you what you are adjusting when you hover over the different parts of the diagonal line. But, if you’re using an older version, this may not be the case. So, remember this:
- The very left hand corner is your Shadows.
- Moving from the very left hand side to the middle point is your Darks.
- Moving from the center to the right hand side is your Lights.
- The very right hand corner is your Highlights.
For your own reference, the Midtones are actually the whole Darks and Lights section. The Midtone is broken into these two sections to make adjusting the curve easier to understand.
Generally speaking, lots of photographers like their diagonal line to finish looking like an S shaped curve. This usually means that the image becomes nicely contrasted and punchy. However your diagonal line ends up, play with it in increments to see what looks best for your image.
Remember to adjust in moderation- you want to ensure that your Blacks still have detail and so do your Whites!
Region Curve Versus Point Curve
In Adobe Lightroom, there are actually two types of Tone Curves you can edit: the Region Curve and the Point Curve. You can switch between them in the Tone Curves panel.
Most photographers only edit the Region Curve (also called the Parametric Curve). This is the default Tone Curve that you see when you open Lightroom, and it has your Highlights, Lights, Darks, and Shadows. The Region Curve has very smooth transitions to ensure that you don’t distort your tones too much. This one is the easiest for beginners.
The Point Curve is intended for more advanced editors that need to do adjustments that aren’t possible with the Region Curve. This one takes off the safety wheels that the Region Curve has and allows you to completely muck around and alter your curve as far as you wish. Advanced black and white photographers use this tool frequently.
What About the Sliders?
Below the chart you will see Highlights, Lights, Darks, and Shadows sliders. Akin to the name of this default Tone Curve, these represent the regions in the image.
You can pull the sliders to the left and to the right and watch the curve adjust alongside it. This is a quick and easy way to make curve adjustments or set the foundation for your more detailed curve adjustments.
It’s not mandatory to use, but can be very helpful!
The Tone Curve and Color Balance
Be default, we’ve been playing with the Tone Curve tool exclusively in the context of shadows, midtones, and highlights. This tool has uses in the color space as well; you can use Tone Curves to adjust color balance.
Color balance in photography and retouching describes the global adjustment in the intensity of colors. The goal is to help render colors in the specific way that you want them to be. Color balance is used to adjust specific colors or completely recolor an image.
The editing world revolves around RGB, or red, green, and blue. This is because adding these colors together is the most effective way to create more colors. As such, your Tone Curve is RGB based.
In the Tone Curve panel, you can switch between Red, Green, and Blue. Whichever color you click, the graph that appears will look similar to one you are already familiar with. The only difference is that pulling the diagonal line up or down will change the color!
If you pull the line up, you will be adding more of the base color. If you pull the line down, you will take color away and change it to the next color. Much like the regular Tone Curve chart, whatever part of the diagonal line you pull on will impact the color in that specific section.
For example, if you’re in the Blue color, pulling on the diagonal line in the Shadows region (the lower left hand corner) will only impact the color blue in the shadows of your image. Likewise, if you pull it in the upper right hand corner, it will only impact the color blue in the highlights of your image.
The Tone Curve and Lightroom Presets
The Tone Curve tool is very impactful with Lightroom presets. Presets are not a one-size-fit-all and may not always apply perfectly to your photograph. To help the preset work better in your image, you can use the Tone Curve tool to adjust the regions of your image to better fit with the preset. This is how you help globalize the use of the presets and keep all of your work consistent.
In conclusion, becoming fluent in the Tone Curve isn’t a daunting task! With a bit of experimentation, you will become a Tone Curve expert- helping your images pop with ease.