#user unknown

curves my beloathed. i'm not sure how to explain this properly as i tend to just click and hope for the best so this will be very basic and may only make sense to me but, here we go

˄˄ here is my base cap from croatoan, which has been duplicated and inverted with the opacity lowered to around 5, and ˯˯ here is what my curve layer looks like before any adjustments

1 (a+b) these get pulled in towards the centre of the graph to increase the contrast and brightness until i get to a base level that i like

2 the hand tool is my best friend, i use this to pick parts of the image that i want to either darken or brighten

˄˄ this is what my cap looks like after adjustments and ˯˯ this is what my curves layer looks like. it's subtle but it really brings out the blues in the cap and the contrast just makes it look a lot nicer tbh

after that i'll play around with the graph line to further brighten or darken the image, and maaaybe go into colour channels if i think the cap needs it

here's a side by side of the cap with the adjustments and without! see how dull it was before? for this one i did go into the red channel and bring it out juust a little, but it would still look good without that step!