Tutorial Quick Way to Tweak Colours in Photoshop

Hello! I tried to put this guide in basic terms so it could be accessible to everyone. Everything I have written on the pictures is also written out in text (I apologize for my poor handwriting)

One way to quickly fiddle with colours is by making a new curves adjustment layer in Photoshop, like the picture below.
(Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Curves...)




This creates a new layer to edit your colours in. Since it's in a separate layer, you can edit the colours however you want and the original photo will not be irreversibly changed in colour. Clicking on the drop down menu lets you switch between individual colour channels. The RGB channel edits black and white balance, and I'm sure you can guess what colours levels the rest of the drop down options edit.



You can click anywhere on the line to create a new point. I would recommend two maximum. Click on a point and drag it to change the shape of the curve, thereby changing the levels of the colour. In the example below, I dragged the red points slightly below its default position, which lowered the amount of red in the picture in the way I wanted it. I also had tweaked the Green and Blue channels by this point.



You can also create some interesting colour balances by pulling two points in opposite directions like the example below. The farther apart from each other they are, the more intense it can be. You could also create some colour balances similar to Instagram photo filters if you really wanted to...



The more you play around with it, the more you will get a feel for it.
Hope this helped!

 

Apologies for the broken images! I will try to fix them.

EDIT: Fixed!