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This article describes the steps for using the Curves command of the software, Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop represents an image's brightness levels in two ways: as light or as ink. These are called adjustment modes. Most photographers are comfortable working with light, and most print-based designers are more comfortable working with ink. Open a gray-scale photograph and choose Image: Adjustments: Curves to access the Curves dialog box. The user can alter the curve to increase or decrease the amount of light used to display an image. To adjust the image, click anywhere on the curve to add a dot, called a control point, and drag it up or down. Upon moving the curve up, the image is brighten by adding more light. To focus adjustments on a particular area of an image, the user can find the brightness range of that area in the horizontal bar, and then adjust the part of the curve that appears directly above that part of the bar. To estimate how a curve might affect an image, compare the curve created to the original diagonal line. With a simple curve adjustment, the user can transform flat-looking images into images that pop. Making a curve steeper exaggerates the differences between the brightest and darkest shades in an area of an image, thereby enhancing detail in that area.

The article offers information on Adobe Systems Inc.'s new Photoshop Elements 8 released nearly simultaneously on the Macintosh and Windows. The new version offers new tools, sports an updated interface, and includes technology from its much larger sibling, Photoshop CS4. The Macintosh version comes with Adobe Bridge CS4, the same full-scale document manager that ships with the Adobe Creative Suite. Windows users get the Organizer, which uses an approach similar to iPhoto for managing photos.

The article offers information about the different ways in which Apple Inc.'s Aperture and Adobe's Lightroom store images in image library of a camera. It is observed that Aperture stores photos in a hierarchical, and project-based system with every photo residing in a project. It is noted that each project can have multiple albums, light tables, Web galleries, and Web journals associated with it. It is informed that Lightroom's management features are simpler than those of Aperture's. It in noted that the Library pane lets one see all of the images, while the Folders pane offers a visual representation of how the images are organized on the hard drive.