How to Improve a Photo Using Curves in Pixelmator

In this piece I will show you how to improve a photo using Curves in Pixelmator. At first glance, particularly for new users of Pixelmator, the Curves tool can look a little daunting, but a little knowledge can go a long way and you can very quickly achieve effective results using Curves. The accompanying image shows an image split in half with the left hand side showing the original image and the right hand side showing after a simple Curves adjustment.

Curves in Pixelmator offer the ability to change the lightness and darkness of pixels across the full tonal range, which offers a great degree of fine grained control. This can make the Curves feature in Pixelmator very powerful, but because of this, users should take great care in using them as it is very easy to makes changes that actually have a detrimental effect on images.

That's why, when starting out, it is usually best to make basic adjustments and get a feel for how the tool works and then as you become more comfortable with working with Curves, you can progress to adding more control points and taking greater control over the appearance of your photos.

On the next page, we'll take a look at the Curves dialog in Pixelmator and give a bit of an understanding of how it works, before actually using it to improve a real digital photo.

• Using Curves in Pixelmator
• The Curves Dialog in Pixelmator
• Making a Curves Adjustment in Pixelmator
• This Curves Adjustment Does Nothing