Free Curves Presets for Photoshop
Last week one of our readers, Pierre, left a comment inquiring about my curves settings in this tutorial. He brought up a great point: curves are tricky.
Getting the right look within curves takes a lot of practice and quite a bit of patience.
Because of this, I decided to make a little set of free curves presets for everyone to use! These are my go to settings for curves and help shape many of the actions we sell. They’ll help you save some time when getting started with curves and can be a bit of a visual guide for you when editing to your own style.
Below is a before and after showing one of the five curves presets included in the free download. Displayed on this beautiful image from Unsplash.
This free set of curves presets includes five effects: brighten, darken, fade, matte, and contrast. As their names suggest, they all center around light and will help you adjust the extent of it in your photography.
Keep in mind the effects of curves presets are very subtle. I strongly recommend starting out with these presets and editing to your own liking so that the effect is powerful enough for your photo. Download your free copy by clicking the button below.
If you need a bit of help installing your new curves presets, keep reading. :)
How to Install Curves Presets in Photoshop
- Open Photoshop and select File > Open.
- Next, choose your photo and open it within Photoshop.
- Now go to the Adjustments Panel and create a new curves layer.
- Within the Curves Panel, select the dropdown and click the “Load “Curves Preset…” text.
- Next navigate to the free curves presets download and select one of the presets. It looks something like this “matte.acv”.
- This will then load the selected preset on your curves layer and apply it to your photo.
- All done!
Thanks so much for reading. If you enjoyed the freebie, please help us out by sharing it on Pinterest! Also check out our other photo editing tutorials and freebies.
can’t see any diff
Hi Gregory,
The effects are pretty minimal, but they have varying impacts on different photos.
Truthfully these are meant to be a starting point and can be adjusted quite easily.
That being said, I’m sorry you found these too plain. We’ll work to make them better in the future.
Thanks,
Mike
compatible with any version of photoshop ?
Hi there Febri, we have not tested these in Photoshop CS1 or Photoshop CS2, but every other version is compatible. :)
I have to say that when it comes to curves small adjustments create the desired outcomes for me. This pack is surprisingly brilliant! Thank you for making it available.