Tonality:  Contrast

A curve, in image editing, is a remapping of image tonality, as a way to emphasise colours or tone in a picture.

Applying a curve to all channels of an image typically change the brightness. Light parts of an image can become lighter while dark parts of an image become darker, increasing the contrast in a composition.

Below I have shown examples of images in their original form as well as with two examples of the same image with different levels of contrast.

As displayed in these images, the higher the contrast the more dramatic the image. I took these frames of light reflecting on water at night to create natural contrast before the editing process to show how slight changes to the tonality of an image can drastically change how an image appears.

I could have further increased the curve of these images or perhaps even decreased it to give the images less contrast, however I felt it was most effective for these specific images to increase the curve sensibly to create realistic images rather than obviously edited ones.