First Let’s talk about color correction in Photoshop. In short, it’s a process of correcting the bad color of a photo to turn it into an amazing picture. Nowadays most of the people have a great smartphone with DSLR camera feature or a real DSLR camera. And we love to click photos, keep them as a great memory and share it in social media to show them how great we are at photography. Despite having a good camera and expertise, sometimes you may don’t get a great photo you wanted to because of bad lighting. Will you stop sharing that one? Shame! Why Photoshop then? You can color correct them and make it even more amazing by using the color correction process.
“Let’s talk something technical: Photoshop color correction is a process of fixing your tone and appropriate color of an image using various adjust tools.” That means it’s a process to make an image right colored.
I will try to show you how you can adjust bad lighting or color correct a photo, remember you don’t need to correct colors for every photo, just the bad ones right?
Let’s take an image of your collection you think that really need a color correction, I have taken this one from Pixabay.
The image I have selected is great but the heavy yellow color tint on it made it little weirder. My goal is to reduce the yellow tint and color correct the image.
Let’s open it in Photoshop. For this tutorial, I am using Photoshop CC 2018. But you can use an older version of Photoshop (Ex: Photoshop CS6 is better).
Now, it’s really simple first you need to create a curves adjustment layer.
Click Layer from the Photoshop Top menu>>Click new adjustment layer>> select Curved
There you get three eyedropper tools.
You have to select the middle one
Now you have to click on anywhere of the picture which looks gray. Don’t click on the top or bottom eye-dropper tool, just the middle one okay (Simple in the image to set gray point).
As you see the model is standing in the middle of the road and we know roads are looking gray faded black. Now, click anywhere on the road with the middle eye-dropper tool.
If you click on the road where you think it should be gray, you will see the change and It will automatically color correct the whole image altogether. It’s easy, isn’t it? You can try to click in different areas to get your required results.
Now you can select the level for more adjustments.
Now, you could ask me some questions.
“What if an image doesn’t have a gray area?
In that case, you need to find out an area which is closed to gray and click on that.
“So, how can I find an area which is closed to gray?”
You can use Photoshop to find your exact place which is closed to gray in real life from that complex image.
It’s really simple. Just click on ->adjustment layer and select a solid color and fill it with 50% gray (Hex code #808080). Click ok to create that 50% gray layer. You can also use any layer and fill it with 50% gray.
Now you have to change the blending mode of that 50% gray layer from Normal to Difference.
Here you have to concentrate on the area which is the darkest. Because dark areas are closes to gray.
“So How is it closes to gray?”
Any area which is completely black will be exactly 50% gray. Also, the difference between the same color will be black. So, any area relatively dark will be closed to gray.
Now, check on the picture where you can find all the darkest places. You have to select the area or mark the area to get the color corrected image.
You can also use the Threshold adjustment layer to find the exact darkest area of that image or any images.
In this case, I took another layer and marked the area where is darkest with the brush tool. I will delete it later because it’s just for showing you the process.
Now, you need to delete the Color Fill and Threshold adjustment layers.
Here you need to repeat the Curves adjustments layers process from the beginning. Use the middle eye-dropper tool and click on the dark area. You can also adjust the curves level for better color correction.
Now you have to delete the extra layer that we are using for marking.
Lest Check out our final work.
So simple isn’t it?
This tutorial is only for a beginner or for an amateur who don’t need professional requirements. But if you want to be professional, you have to practice more with Photoshop tools. But if you are a professional photographer and you need color correction for thousands of images I guess you will not do it by yourself. This kills time. Either you have to hire someone or outsource your color correction process.
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