{"id":41187,"date":"2026-03-02T06:08:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T11:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=41187"},"modified":"2026-03-01T23:08:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T04:08:31","slug":"tip-jar-9-curves-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/03\/tip-jar-9-curves-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Tip Jar 9: Curves, part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>And now we get into the second aspect of using the &#8216;Curves&#8217; function for image editing, and that&#8217;s color management. I&#8217;m being my usual long-winded self here, so bear with me &#8211; if you can&#8217;t handle the length, there are TikTok morons that you could probably relate to.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1169434630?badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" title=\"Understanding RGB color, and using the 'Curves' function to adjust them\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/api\/player.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Something that I didn&#8217;t go into within the video is, what constitutes excessive editing, or to be blunt, cheating? At what point does it become a digital creation rather than an edited photo? And there&#8217;s really no good answer to that &#8211; it&#8217;s more of a question you have to answer for yourself. I take a lot of pride in trying to capture something as close to perfect (or at least <em>acceptable<\/em>) in-camera, rather than attempting to &#8216;rescue&#8217; it afterwards &#8211; and when I was shooting slide film, I had no choice, because whatever I did wrong was locked into the film. Yet I also see the value in creating something fartistic using the tools at hand &#8211; especially when it comes to monochrome images.<\/p>\n<p>Then there&#8217;s the idea that the camera <a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2018\/07\/thats-not-true\/\" target=\"_blank\">didn&#8217;t capture things perfectly<\/a> or &#8220;as-is&#8221; to begin with &#8211; contrast and saturation settings within the camera, the metering mode and what it read from, and even the processing algorithms within the camera software all have their effects, so what&#8217;s &#8220;true&#8221;? Well, there is no such thing. BUT, being too heavy-handed in the tweaks or alterations that you do will be spotted by anyone with a modicum of experience, and it&#8217;s up to you to decide if you care or not (or up to <em>them<\/em> if they have stipulations over what is acceptable, with contest submissions for instance.) I personally avoid composites (using two or more images combined) for anything serious or fartistic, and only one of my prints has such a thing and that&#8217;s only for personal use. But I&#8217;ll have a lot of fun with them for <a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/Tips\/pasting.html\" target=\"_blank\">frivolous purposes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Getting these two videos done has laid the groundwork for some future Tip Jar posts, and I will try to link to them as needed, but knowing the basics of Curves will certainly help no matter what and is a useful skill to have, even if you do very little image editing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And now we get into the second aspect of using the &#8216;Curves&#8217; function for image editing, and that&#8217;s color management. I&#8217;m being my usual long-winded self here, so bear with me &#8211; if you can&#8217;t handle the length, there are TikTok morons that you could probably relate to. Something that I didn&#8217;t go into within [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,3809],"tags":[8584,8585,8580,8582,1036,8583,389,8581,8579,8570,3925],"class_list":["post-41187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photo","category-reference","category-video","tag-auto-white-balance","tag-awb","tag-color-wheel","tag-complementary","tag-curves","tag-opposing","tag-photo-editing","tag-reciprocal","tag-rgb-color","tag-selective-editing","tag-white-balance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41187"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41192,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41187\/revisions\/41192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}