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Each of the Custom curves (Y’, R, G, and B) has a vertical YSFX slider at the upper left-hand corner of the Curve Editor that lets you invert any or all color channels by any amount you want, to create different types of stylized effects.
Image with the Luma channel modified using the vertical YSFX slider
As with all other adjustments in the Color page, YSFX may be combined with Power Windows or HSL qualification to limit channel inversions to specific portions of the image for creative purposes.
Soft Clip
The Soft Clip controls consist of four sliders underneath the Curve controls of the Custom curves, and give you an interface for adjusting highlight and shadow soft clipping either overall, with
Ganging enabled, or on a per-channel basis. The Soft Clip controls are intended to provide clip-by-clip adjustment, as opposed to the Generate Soft Clip LUT settings, which let you set one soft-clipping setting for the entire program. For more information on the Soft Clip LUT setting, see Chapter 4, “System and User Preferences.”
High and Low Soft Clip controls within the Curves palette
Soft clipping lets you apply a “knee” to any clipping that occurs at the upper or lower extremes of the image, and can be used to quickly ease off any unpleasantly harsh loss of detail that occurs as a result of blowing out the highlights or crushing the shadows too aggressively.
In the following example, the screenshot at top has had the highlights deliberately blown out by excessively boosting the highlight contrast. As you can see, the edges of the clipped area lack detail. The screenshot at bottom shows the same image with soft clipping increased for all three color channels. The result retrieves detail, compressing the highlights to bring the tops of each color channel back within the allowable range.
