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Home >> Photography >> Digital Curvemeister Photoshop Plug-in In my cursory look at Picture Window Pro, I mentioned that there is a huge cottage industry of small and large software vendors creating Photoshop plug-ins to help make life easier in working with the 800 lb gorilla in the image editing market. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of plug-ins, filters, actions and automations available, some free, some at modest cost, and some at very high costs. It would be a daunting challenge to learn of and try out every single one. And of course, some are excellent tools (Photokit Sharpener) and some are not so excellent. It reveals the impressiveness of Photoshop's dominance in the market, as well as its notorious complexity for newcomers to the application. In this review, we look at Curvemeister, a plug-in that attempts to demystify the concept of the Curves control in Photoshop. It is the creation of an individual developer, Michael Russell, and it has a modest cost of US $34.95. Curvemeister is compatible with Photoshop Elements 1 and later, so one does not need to be terribly deep-pocketed to try it out. In my travels through the virtual world of the Internet, I have come across on more than one occasion, the notion that the Curves control in Photoshop is perhaps the most powerful of all the tools available. You can use it to adjust black, white, and grey points. You can use it for color correction, or to increase contrast, and you can use it to adjust the brightness of the image amongst other controls. You can do all of this globally or individually for the red, green, and blue channels. Many of the Photoshop Image/Adjustments options can be done with Curves, but separating the adjustments into specific components such Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation, and Levels makes it easier for us to work within Photoshop. The Photoshop gurus that have been Adobe certified probably have no need for any fancy filters or plug-ins, but for many of us, trying to wrap our head around what Photoshop can do, is a significant challenge, especially for those of us who aren’t doing it for a living. Mike Russell tries to make life easy for those of us still coming to grips with Photoshop and provides a plug-in with dual modes, one with a wizard interface, and a manual adjustment mode for those comfortable with Curves, but want a more flexible interface. At the web site where one can download a demo or purchase Curvemeister, there is ample information on how to work with Curvemeister in both modes and step-by-step tutorials with sample images made available to you, so that you can follow along and understand how Curvemeister works. Russell has even setup a Yahoo Groups forum for users of Curvemeister to discuss their experiences and post questions for Russell to answer and troubleshoot. All in all a tremendous resource for Curvemeister users, as the information and tutorials are well written and easy to follow along. I like the little trinkets of humor that Russell throws in here and there, something that I do myself at this web site. About the only thing I would have liked is a PDF version of all the instructions and tutorials for easy downloading and printing if desired. I was able to create a PDF document by downloading the web pages into Acrobat, but of course web pages are not optimized for print format, so I ended up with over 100 pages in my document. While web pages are a convenient and cost effective way to distribute help and instructions, it isn’t the best way to work through step-by-step on a single monitor system, even one as large as mine. A dual monitor setup would have been ideal to have the Curvemeister web pages on one screen while I worked on Photoshop on the other, but this is merely a minor grouse on my part and I’m glad that Russell had devoted the time and effort to post so much good information. Wizard Mode This is a very simple and straightforward way to use Curvemeister and even first time users of Photoshop will be able to obtain great looking, color corrected images right away by following the step-by-step instructions and following the tips at the Curvemeister web site.
Step 1 is to select a color space from the four choices of RGB, wgCMYK, Lab, and HSB. This is quite an interesting feature, that there can be more color space choices than just the usual RGB that most users would work in. However, the choice of the Curvemeister color space appears to be more a visual or cosmetic choice, as the original image profile and working color space (e.g., Adobe RGB 1998) are not affected.
Step 2 is to set the shadow point – the tip is to click on a shadow area where there is some useful detail and let the really dark, detail-less regions go black. You can just make out the red circle in the example image below where I sampled the black point in the banner.
Step 3 is to set the highlight point – just as with the shadow step, ignore the totally blown out highlights and select a region that has some highlight detail. In the image below, I sampled from the white tablecloth at the far left of the image. Adjusting the black and highlight points should instantly improve the contrast of the image.
Step 4 is to set a neutral point (grey) - easy to do if you have something in the scene that is definitely grey, but if not then a white point is also acceptable or other middle brightness range. But what if there is no obvious middle brightness range? There is hope yet, but this will be discussed further down. Below, I sampled from a grey section of the banner.
Step 5 is to set the brightness level for each of the four, color spaces listed in Step 1. Although most people would likely work in the RGB space, it may be that you prefer what the other spaces offer for color correction (I found that I liked what Lab did for certain types of shots with plenty of skintone). Setting the brightness level for each is basically seasoning the image to your personal preferences. For the image below, the RGB space provided the best looking image. Afterwards, you finish off the wizard and end up with a final image. You can either close the Wizard and then work with Curvemeister in manual mode, or shut it down completely and return to Photoshop.
Five steps that are very quick, very simple, and very effective. When I first ran through the wizard interface I though it was not much more than setting shadow, highlight and grey points in Photoshop Levels, but Michael Russell provided this explanation for the differences in the two methods: There are several important advantages over using Levels. In Curvemeister the shadow and highlight points have some important advantages over the black and white triangles in Levels, because they are used to set neutrals, and they are carried across color spaces. Being able to drag shadow, highlight, and neutral points around is a big convenience. And because it's so easy to quickly pick your favorite color space, even a beginner will have some powerful advantages over more experienced people who work only in RGB and CMYK. It turns out for example that Lab is an excellent color space for setting a single neutral, since overall contrast is untouched, and Photoshop Levels for some reason disables the neutral eyedropper in Lab mode. The first images I worked with were record keeping shots of a hotel ballroom, where my workplace’s senior executives would provide us with a fiscal year end report on how our organization has done what to expect for the coming year. The ballroom is quite dark, so working with just the ambient light was a challenge (ISO 1600 with wide open apertures). I used a pre-set white balance using the ExpoDisc to reference the light. The whole point of using something like an ExpoDisc (a filter like device that acts like a portable grey card) is to minimize the editing required for color correction because the ExpoDisc is an 18 percent grey reference. The theory is that if used correctly, I should have color corrected images right off the bat. The Curvemeister Wizard put the lie to that notion after I set the shadow, highlight and grey points and got a richly saturated image that blew away the dingy, magenta case original. Note for the sample images below, the differences are clearly visible with a calibrated monitor, so if you are viewing un an un-calibrated monitor, you'll have to trust my words.
I tried some other images taken during the AGM session in the ballroom and was impressed with what the Curvemeister could do in its very simple wizard mode. From other record keeping shots to portraits, the Curvemeister produced better looking images and in the case of the portraits, healthier looking image than the originals. On this basis alone the $35 cost seemed well worth it for the ease in which one could obtain color corrected images on a consistent basis. Now, while I admit that the differences in results from the Curvemeister Wizard and manual Photoshop Levels controls are at times subtle, I consistently see more neutral images from using Curvemeister than anything I was able to accomplish myself. Given how nitpicky digital darkroom practitioners are, sometimes, subtle results are looked upon in Everest-like proportions. Consider how some people like to magnify digital files to 100 percent and then compare miniscule noise differences that never show up in a final print. Mountains out of mole hills as they say, which is why we’re all so neurotic and can spend endless time debating Nikon versus Canon or PC versus Mac. Other samples:
Manual Adjustments The Curvemeister Wizard is probably all that a lot of photographers would need for color correcting their image files, but it works best when the image contains obvious shadow, highlight, and middle value tones to reference. What if your image has no such obvious points to sample? Curvemeister provides a way to workaround that problem and still obtain a good-looking image. Mike Russell calls it a Threshold adjustment and this is how it works (as plagiarized from his notes): 1 - First bring up the main curves window, as seen below, and select the Lab color space and then ensure that the Lightness tab is selected. 2- Move the mouse pointer to the left side of the curves window so that the pointer turns into a moving arrow to allow you to move a dashed red line to the right - when you start adjusting the red line, the image turns into a faded B&W image to allow you to clearly see when the highlights start becoming washed out. I cannot show you how the B&W image changes, but I can indicate where the highlight is in the sample image below, which is the necklace. I adjusted this so that only a modest portion of the necklace went white. 3- Move the cursor to the right side of the curves window and do the same except to move the red dashed line to the left. Again, the image turns into B&W to clearly show how the shadows are affected, which in the sample below is the hair circled at left. I adjusted for a small amount of the hair detail to turn pure black. 4- By setting the shadow and highlight points you have adjusted the contrast, but at this stage the color has not been adjusted - while still in the Lab color space, I click on the All tab to be able to adjust the magenta/green and blue/yellow colors for a more pleasing final image by adding some color into the skin and brightening the over all image using the Lightness curve box. The original image compared to the edit (not the same as what I used for the samples above) - this image does have an obvious black point but no middle or white point to sample from:
Another sample without any obvious (useful) white, middle, or black points:
Additonal Thoughts I must say that I like Curvemeister. It does simplfy the process greatly for a newcomer to the digital darkroom thanks to the easy to use wizard interface, and I think even old hands can find good value from this inexpensive plug-in. I have only scratched the surface of what can be done with the Curvemeister and all of the options available from it. The interface is quite striking and I particularly liked the ability to display all three colors plus the global at once when using the RGB controls (similar for wgCMYK, and Lab modes, as seen below).
Curvemeister can also work with 16 bit files, so you need not degrade your image quality by converting to 8 bit file mode. The main window provides valuable numerical data so that one can reference how close to absolute black (0) or absolute white (255) you are in the image. While the image can be magnified while in Curvemeister mode, I would have liked keyboard shortcut recognition for faster image resizing. Also, Curvemeister by default works opposite to the Photoshop Curves. Moving the Photoshop Curves to the left corner lightens the image whereas in Curvemeister, one pulls down to the lower right. However, the left-right curve orientation may be toggled by clicking on the diamond shape in the bottom center of the graph, or via the "Black on Left" menu item. The only quirk I "thought" I found was that if I ran through the Wizard or did a manual adjustment that got applied to the image and then realized I made a mistake, hitting Cancel or Reset in the main Curvemeister window did not reset the image back to its original state. Likewise in the Wizard interface, if one decided that a sampling was not correct and went back to the previous state, the image still remained altered from the mistaken sampling. Even shutting down Curvemeister and then opening it up again did not revert the image back to its original state. I had to close the image file, open it up, and then apply Curvemeister again. Then I discovered that I just had to right click on the sample point and a little window pops up to allow me to delete the sample, a Homer Simpson D'oh! moment for me. Michael Russel also pointed out that pressing the shift key will cause all the control points to be deleted, as well as the ones you add manually. I would have also liked a simple to use batch processing feature, but not being a developer, I have no idea how difficult it would be to add the feature and what that would do to the price. The workaround when working with a number of images taken in the same lighting conditions is to adjust one image with Curvemeister and then for each subsequent image either load Curvemeister and hit Control F to apply the last curve used, or simply click on the "Last Filter" menu item under the Photoshop Filters heading to also apply the last Curvemeister setting. For images worked at another time, or when using more than one curve setting, one can just bring up the regular Photoshop Curves control and recall any saved Curvemeister-created curve to apply. Create a Photoshop Action or script and you can certainly do batch processing as Curvemeister will apply the curve file generated during the recording of the action, but I'd prefer the ability to simply point Curvemeister to a folder of images and tell it to batch process all the images using a newly created, or saved curve. While I didn't bother creating my own Actions, I did finally get down to working with almost 100 family snapshots lingering on the hard drive while I tried to find the time to edit them. While I could have simply printed them straight to avoid time consuming editing, I've had comments from the family that past images printed straight, did not "look" right. D'oh again! This little project seemed as good as any to try out Curvemeister over many images and it was fine. I worked with the wizard interface for the most part and even for those images with no obvious grey reference points, setting black and white points still gave me good looking images with good contrast. The thing I notice about digital images straight from the camera, is a lack of contrast. Now of course I set my D100 to minimal contrast because I would prefer to add in contrast as needed rather than trying to tone down contrast that's been set too high. Setting proper black and white points is the key to boosting the contrast of an otherwise dull image. And, setting black and white points will usually get you most of the way there to obtaining proper color too. Conclusion I found Curvemeister to be very useful plug-in that gives me more confidence that my images can be color corrected on a consistent basis. It also makes me a bit cheesed off that I spent CAN $200 on a well-regarded and highly talked of accessory in the ExpoDisc to try and achieve that state of color corrected images straight out of the camera, only to find that it didn’t do the job and that a US $35 plug-in achieved exactly what I expected of the ExpoDisc. Granted that the Curvemeister does require me to edit each image one by one or create custom Actions, and my experience with the ExpoDisc is still minimal, but not promising at this stage. On this basis it is very obvious which color correction method I would recommend to anyone who asks. I will continue to work with the ExpoDisc in case it is merely me that cannot figure out how it works, while being so (apparently) effective for others. The sign of a useful Photoshop plug-in or filter is whether or not it finds a permanent home in a user's virtual toolbox. There is a plethora of filters and plug-ins and I happen to have a few myself, but if you ask me to state honestly, which ones I use on a regular basis, I'd only be able to mention maybe three or four. Curvemeister will now be one of those regularly used plug-ins or filters. Update: Curvemeister has been updated to Version 2 and is now US $80 to purchase or US $40 to upgrade. I have not tried Version 2 as of this writing (February 2006). Link to Curvemeister |
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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