Photoshop Creative

I love playing with smartcurves. For those who are looking for a true (and free) curves plug-in for Elements, here it is:
http://free.pages.at/easyfilter/curves.html

I'll be frank with you, I rarely use it for normal curves editing. This is because I have learnt other way to do curves adjustments, either with gradient maps or combinations of levels, blend modes and masks. Also I am not at ease to color correct with curves. Maybe it is just me, but I find the interface to tweak many points in curves is not very precise and responsive.

But...
This free software has many advantages:
- works in 16 bits
- lets you play with other color modes, especially Lab or HSB/HSL etc...
- shows histograms not available elsewhere: saturation, chroma...

The killer advantage I am presently playing with is the ability to save your curves in presets, and even use any preset (.acv curves) for CS.

Just for play, I saved presets for channels, RGB, Lab lightness or a or b channel, standard or inverted S-curves, Lab colour enhancement, tones selections for masks (midtones...)

Can anyone help me find useful curves presets for CS on the Web?

Here is one for you Michel

http://hybridfan.deviantart.com/art/CRO ... S-53412730

Many thanks Suzi,
I have downloaded the cross process curves:

loaded in smartcurves, et voilà...

Michel, I have no idea if these will be of any help to you, but here they are:
http://www.zuberphotographics.com/conte ... nloads.htm
http://fotogenetic.dearingfilm.com/downloads.html
http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/UT2-curves.html
http://vdbimageworks.com/cs/files/folde ... y1054.aspx

another one, scroll way down to Fringewood

http://www.main.com/~fringewood/photosh ... PCtxt.html

Many thanks, Reka and Suzi,
Many of those curves will be useful.

Another limitation about curves in Elements, even with smartcurves, is that you can't create a curves adjustment layer, you have to apply the curve to a duplicate layer. However, Elements can 'borrow' curve adjustment layers made by Photoshop. For compatibility reasons, you can open them, but not tweak their parameters. I know of one exception found by Graffi: with PSE6 Windows, you can borrow a B&W adjustment layer from CS and still change the settings... Adobe soon discovered this and disabled the feature in the Mac PSE6 version.

My suggestion to all: save the curves settings of the Lab tut of the Anniversary Newsletter in an .acv file since it can be used in most landscape shots. Possibly save several variants with different degree of pop (a and b slope or S-curve).

Thanks for those links, Reka....... I hadn't realised you could get extra curves - then I thought they must only be for use with the full PS Curves tools. Really pleased that they worked with the SmartCurves plug-in.