When it comes to tweaking and improving photos Photoshop is second to none. I am far from being a serious photographer. In fact I really rarely use the camera but one thing I know for sure, that is that by using curves in Photoshop you can improve the photos’ color and general look significantly. I will show you how to use curves on one real example. Few years ago a friend of mine visited Andes mountains and took many snapshots, I will use one of his photos to show you what you can achieve by using curves in Photoshop.

Original Image

I opened the image in Photoshop and started by going to New adjustment layer > Threshold as shown below.

But before proceeding with threshold adjustment select the Color Sampler Tool from the tool palette and set sample size to 3 by 3 average.

Now move the threshold slider all the way to the left and start moving it to the right bit by bit. First parts of the image that appears while sliding are the most darker ones. Pick a nice spot and mark it with the Color Sampler Tool. You will see number 1 marker. Now move the slider all the way to the left and start moving the slider to the right bit by bit. The most brightest parts begin to emerge. Pick again nice spot and mark it with the Color Sampler Tool.

Threshold did their purpose and we can now delete that layer since we have marked the darkest and brightest parts of the image. Using threshold is a neat trick to figure out the brightest and the darkest areas. Like I have said you can now delete the threshold adjustment layer or hide it if you prefer it more that way.

Now make new adjustment layer and select Curves, now you will see 3 ink dropper icons, one is for black, second is fro gray and third one is for white point.

Click on the first ink dropper and than pick that marker 1 in the image, than click the second dropper and now look on the image for the part that has some gray color in it. It is sometimes hard to spot the gray area but I clicked on the rock since I thought it has the most gray component. And at the and third eyedropper and pick that area marked with number 2 that we made using the threshold.

Of course you can experiment with different points but basically there is not much more to it. Have a look at the difference below.

This routine can be used as starting point for a more serious image manipulation in making wallpapers or compositions.

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