Cinematic Color Grading in Photoshop (+5 Free Presets)

Color Grading in Photoshop With One Curves Layer

Color grading in Photoshop usually means a stack of adjustment layers, a LUT you can’t change, or a preset that turns everyone orange. In this video Aaron builds a cinematic grade on one Curves layer, by clicking on the photo instead of the graph, keeps the skin natural by leaving the midtones alone, saves the result as a preset, and shows both ways to install the five free presets and the Bonus. This page follows the video step by step, then covers the install in full.

Step 1: Add a Curves Adjustment Layer

Open the photo, go to the Adjustments panel and click Curves. The Properties panel shows a grid with a straight diagonal line from the bottom left (the blacks) to the top right (the whites), and a menu above it that says RGB. On RGB, the curve adjusts your lights and your darks. Switch that menu to Red, Green or Blue and the same curve starts color toning the photo instead. That is the whole method, and it is the secret to color grading while protecting skin tones.

Step 2: Color the Red Channel With Two Points

Pick Red in the channel menu. Grab the middle of the line: pull it up and the photo goes red, pull it down and it goes cyan. But you don’t have to work in the middle. Grab the point at the bottom left and pull it up: red goes into the shadows. Grab the point at the top right and pull it down: cyan goes into the highlights (pull it left instead and the highlights go red). With just those two points you have a big color grade on the photo. Click the reset icon at the bottom of the panel to start over.

Step 3: Use the Hand Tool, Aaron’s Favorite Trick

Click the hand icon at the top left of the Properties panel, then go to the photo itself. Hover over a shadow and Photoshop highlights that tone on the curve. Click on the shadow and drag up to bring more red into the shadows. Find a highlight, click and drag down to bring less red into the highlights. You never have to touch the graph: you color the parts of the photo you can see. Click the eye icon at the bottom of the panel to compare the before and after.

With the hand tool, you can click and drag on your image itself, so you don’t need to use the curves graph.

Aaron Nace

Step 4: Do the Same on the Green and Blue Channels

Switch to Green, leave the red curve as it is, and use the hand tool again: a little more green in the shadows, a little green pulled down out of the highlights. Then Blue: a little blue into the shadows, and pull the highlights down so they go warm. Cool shadows and warm highlights are the split behind most cinematic grades, and the photo looks like a different image with one Curves adjustment.

Step 5: Protect the Skin Tones (Keep the Midtones on the Line)

Skin tones live in the midtones of a photograph. Adding color to the shadows and highlights is what makes the grade, but the midtone area has to stay protected. Go back to the Blue channel: the hand tool brought the shadows up toward blue, which is great, but it also dragged the midtones a little toward yellow. Drag that midtone point up and to the right so the yellow lives in the highlights, then put the midtones back on the center line. Then do the same on Green: pull the midtone point right back to the middle. The red midtone already sits on the center point. Toggle the layer off and on and the skin tones stay completely natural while the shadows and highlights carry the color.

Keep the center of each curve right on the line. As long as your midtones stay on the line, your skin tones are protected.

Aaron Nace

Step 6: Save the Grade as a Curves Preset

Once you have a color grade you like, save it so you can reuse it on any photo. In the Properties panel click the menu icon (four lines, top right) and choose Save Curves Preset. Photoshop writes a small .acv file that holds all four curves. In the video Aaron makes a new folder called Bonus and saves his grade inside it, and the download has it the same way: Bonus > PHLEARN Bonus (From the Tutorial).acv, the sixth preset.

Step 7: Load the Free Presets

Make any Curves adjustment layer, open the same panel menu and choose Load Curves Preset. Go to the Curves Presets folder from the download, pick a file and click Open: the four curves fill in at once. It gets even better: copy all six .acv files into Photoshop’s Curves presets folder, quit and reopen Photoshop, and they show up in the Preset menu at the very top of every Curves layer, ready to adjust any way you like. The five looks and the Bonus are all built the way Steps 2 to 5 describe: color at the ends of each curve, midtones on the line, skin protected.

The Free Curves Presets: Five Looks + a Bonus

Each look puts its color in the shadows and highlights and keeps the midtones close to the line. They are full Curves layers, so pick Red, Green or Blue and move a point to make any of them your own.

How to Install Curves Presets in Photoshop (Two Ways)

Unzip the download first; Photoshop can’t read a zipped file. Both ways below are also on page 3 of the step-by-step PDF guide, and the presets zip has its own install guide, so you always have the steps next to the files.

Way 1, load a look once. Select a Curves adjustment layer, open Window > Properties if the panel is closed, click the four-line menu at the panel’s top right and choose Load Curves Preset. Pick a .acv file from the Curves Presets folder and click Open. Load another the same way any time. This works in every version of Photoshop since CS6, on Mac and Windows.

Way 2, put all six in the Preset menu for good. Quit Photoshop. Copy the six .acv files into Photoshop’s Curves presets folder, taking the Bonus file out of its Bonus folder first: on a Mac choose Go > Go to Folder in the Finder and paste the path; on Windows paste it into the File Explorer address bar. Open Photoshop again and the presets are in the Preset menu at the top of every Curves layer’s Properties panel.

• Mac~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop 2026/Presets/Curves
• Windows%APPDATA%\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2026\Presets\Curves

Each version of Photoshop has its own folder, so change 2026 to the year of the version you run. Not sure which you have? Open the Adobe folder in that path and look for your Adobe Photoshop folder, then Presets, then Curves. No Curves folder in there? Make one. Nothing shows up after the copy? Photoshop only reads the folder when it starts, so quit and reopen it.

Want 20 More Looks? They Come With the PRO Course

This video shows one way to color grade in Photoshop. There are many more, and Aaron’s new PRO course Skin Tones, Color Grading & Presets in Photoshop & Lightroom teaches them: color correcting skin with the vectorscope in Camera Raw, then color grading with Curves, Blend If, gradient maps, the color grading wheels, LUTs and Lightroom presets, and it includes over 121 presets that color grade your photo while protecting skin tones, the 20-look PHLEARN Color Grading Curves pack among them. If one Curves layer got you this far, the course is the rest of the method. It is included with PHLEARN PRO.

Free first: Levels vs. Curves explains the panel from scratch, and the color grading presets in Camera Raw cover the other tool.

Quick Reference: Menus, Curves and Settings

• Add the layerAdjustments panel > Curves
• Pick a channelThe RGB menu above the grid: RGB, Red, Green, Blue
• Color from the photoHand tool in Properties, then click a shadow or highlight on the photo and drag
• Red curveUp = red, down = cyan
• Green curveUp = green, down = magenta
• Blue curveUp = blue, down = yellow
• Keep skin naturalColor at the ends of each curve; the midtone point stays on the center line
• Before / afterThe eye icon at the bottom of the Properties panel
• Save / load a presetProperties panel menu > Save Curves Preset / Load Curves Preset (.acv)
• Install for goodCopy the .acv files into Presets > Curves, quit and reopen Photoshop