Photoshop help! Curves? levels? Color Balance?

Question

What's the difference between Curves, Levels, and color balance? Don't they all do the same thing? When would I use one over the other?

Can you give me a brief description of what each one does?

Thanks so much!

Answer 1

Curves: Changes the lighting with specific hues

    At the bottom left corner, it may change a face skin tone to be brighter (pull up), posterize, or darker (pull down).

    At top right corner, it may change the background to a different if you pull it up or down (down gives you red sometimes, I believe)

    The centre line is changing the brightness sometimes.

Levels: Changes the lighting if you pull the bar thing over (is that the Levels? Can't remember; will not open CS3 while IE +iTunes is on because totally crashes S****y computer)

Color Balance: Changes (mid)tones to be warm or cool. Same applies on the Shadows and Highlights.

I go:

Brightness/Contrast

Color Balance

Curves

I don't use levels because I barely find it controllable.

Most of it comes from experimenting on photos.