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AntoineGRA
Participant
March 18, 2013
Open for Voting

P: Ability to accurately nudge RGB curves with arrow keys

  • March 18, 2013
  • 13 replies
  • 1024 views

Lightroom curves are really difficult to finetune.It could be great to be able to create/select a point on the curve and move it with the arrow keys by tiny steps (Photoshop does this very well).

    13 replies

    B
    Brave_Companion16B8
    Inspiring
    September 8, 2025

    Please allow the arrows to control position of control points in the curves window. 

    J
    Joe Foe Toe
    Legend
    January 21, 2022

    It would be helpful to be able to use left/right keys to move curve-point along with up/down keys without having to switch between input and output.

      J
      jgrgilbert
      Participating Frequently
      August 8, 2020

      I discovered today that once a point is selected, the values (0-255) of the two fields "Input" and "Output" can be selected, and the up and down arrows can be used to increment and decrement them.

      Not as intuitive as using the four arrow keys on a selected point, but it suits my purpose where I want to set thresholds for the start and ends of the curve for the scan of a slide, and only want to change the input value.
      Bob Somrak
      Bob Somrak
      Legend
      April 27, 2019
      I might help to actually list your issues with the Tone Curve instead of a generalized statement.  


      The tone curve in Lightroom does some useful things that I don't think ACR and Photoshop will do.

      Option click near the curve and a point will be placed without moving the line.
      Hold Shift while moving the point and it will only move in the vertical direction.
      Hold Option while moving the point and it will move slowly
      Hold Shift-Option while moving the point and it will move slowly in only the vertical direction,

      I do agree that having a feature to use the arrow keys and Shift-arrow keys (smaller movement) would be a handy feature.
      M4 Pro Mac Mini. 48GB
      JBedfordPhoto
      JBedfordPhoto
      Inspiring
      April 26, 2019
      Why oh why can’t Lightroom have smooth adjustments in the tone curve?!? It’s like it’s been dippped in fast-drying glue. Photoshop can do it, so can ACR. What’s the problem LR? Seriously, I’d love an answer as to why, for over 11 years, this tone curve is clunky as ever. Adobe rep, please chime in.
      Bob Somrak
      Bob Somrak
      Legend
      April 26, 2019
      As Rikk pointed out you can use the Alt/Option key to help move the point in smaller increments.  Unfortunately, the implementation of this feature leaves a lot to be desired.  The tracking of the cursor and point is ABSOLUTELY terrible and makes it hard to use.
      M4 Pro Mac Mini. 48GB
      cameronrad
      cameronrad
      Inspiring
      April 26, 2019
      Click to select the Targeted Adjustment tool  in the upper-left of the Tone Curve panel and then click on an area in the photo that you want to adjust. Drag or press the Up and Down Arrow keys to lighten or darken the values for all similar tones in the photo.
      https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/image-tone-color.html#fine_tune_the_tonal_scale_using_the_tone_curve_panel
      T
      TangCanada
      Participating Frequently
      April 26, 2019
      Six years and still waiting, in the meantime new bugs are cropping up while usability issues are ignored.... remind me, why are we paying their salaries each month again?
      JBedfordPhoto
      JBedfordPhoto
      Inspiring
      August 21, 2017


      Using Lightroom's Tone Curve adjustments feels clumsy and not nearly as fluid as making tone curve adjustments in Photoshop. Can you improve this in a future release?

      (p.s. using LRCC on Windows 7 64bit i4770k i7, 16GB RAM, dual SSDs, GTX 970 4GB graphics card).
      D
      Damon_Charles
      Participant
      August 21, 2017


      At the moment the only way you can adjust points along a Tone Curve is by dragging with the mouse, and it's hard to make accurate adjustments, even with the graph at maximum size. It would be really useful to be able to make fine adjustments to points by toggle-selecting them and moving using the cursor keys.
      Show more replies
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