Aperture Users Network

A great question we get asked a lot is "why doesn't Aperture have Curves?" Now mind you we only get asked this by Photoshop users—in our Road Tour classes when we'd survey how many people were able to use Curves in Photoshop, only a few people would raise their hands. A very, very few.

But it's a good question anyhow. Curves is a staple of the Photoshop workflow, so why isn't it in Aperture. It is, it's just hidden in Levels.

If you make a Levels adjustment to your image, you'll see control points for the black point, mid tone (or grey point, as the text-entry box below the slider refers to it) and white point. The midpoint also has a point at the top.



However, if you click on the small icon to the right above the histogram, you'll get quarter tones in your images as well, breaking the image tonal curve into an analog of the Photoshop Curves dialog box, only displayed across a single chart, not across two axis.



Like the Curves box, this controls your input and output points for the tones in the image. If you move the white, black and grey points the quarter tones will move with them, however if you move the quarter tones themselves, you can adjust just those aspects of the image.

Yes, there's more finite control in Curves, as you can add points along the line, but here you have the same ability to change in and out at the same time.

Now keep in mind that most people adjust the curve of the image because they're trying to do something specific to an image—kick up the highlights without losing detail in the shadows, and part of the reason there's no full-blown Curves in Aperture is that the other tools are designed to do all those fancy things, without having to take a lesson from Julianne Kost or Scott Kelby.

If you want to recover highlight (in Aperture 2) without distorting the shadow, drag the "Recovery" slider in the Exposure pane, or use the Highlight tool in Highlights & Shadows.




In any case, the functionality is there, but Aperture also provides additional and more finite tools to perform the same function.