1. **Curves**. The king of color adjustments, with boundless power and infinite variations. However, in practical applications, curves are not the first choice. So what is the first choice? The first choice is ——
2. **Levels**. Adjusting the three sliders can solve most problems and is much more user-friendly than curves. To give an analogy, if curves are the general, then levels are the vanguard.
3. **Hue/Saturation** and **Color Balance**, tied for third place.
4. Try to avoid using the "Image Adjustment - Variations" menu. This menu cannot be quantified and does not support masks, making it suitable only for beginners.
5. Unless absolutely necessary, do not use the "Image Adjustment - Brightness/Contrast" menu. The brightness adjustment here often introduces white haze, and the contrast frequently becomes unbalanced.
6. If you attempt to use the "Image Adjustment - Lightness" menu for anything, you're doomed. Remember: we are discussing color adjustments, not coloring. Lightness is a 100% useless metric here—it does more harm than good. Never touch it!
7. In summary, if a color adjustment problem has a solution, it can certainly be solved using these five tools: Curves, Levels, Hue/Saturation, and Color Balance. We strongly recommend that no other methods should be used beyond these five.
8. Unless for extremely simple adjustments, all adjustments should absolutely be performed on adjustment layers (with editable masks). This approach offers at least four major advantages...