I get asked a lot about color correction and color balancing in photography, when they just aren’t sure if the tones look quite right when the open it in Photoshop. One of the first things people tend to do is try adjusting the color balance (Image ~ Adjustments ~ Color Balance). Granted this will certainly do something, and it might be what you need, but chances are you don’t actually know which colors you have too much of or too little of.

Here is the reality; if your pictures seem a bit off, whether film or digital, they will lack one or both of two things: 1) contrast, 2) white balance. For this reason, most pictures can be corrected by addressing these two areas before mucking about with any other settings. Here is why. Both film and digital camera sensors are engineered to react to light in a very predictable manner. If you are shooting in a color range of 5500K, then whites run at one frequency, reds at another, greens at another and so on… In theory then, all you have to do is find your white and the rest mathematically fall into place. And the contrast? That’ll just make the first job easier when it comes time to find white.

So before mucking about with any other settings here is what I suggest you do first. Run an auto adjust on all levels (Images ~ Adjustments ~ Auto Levels or shift+command+L). The results might seem extreme at first but hit command+z back and forth a few time to really get a feel for what’s changing. Chances are you will like what you see and leave it at that. If this is what you had hoped for, then undo this first step and try just adjusting the contrast. Again, the quick and dirty method, Image ~ Adjustments ~ Auto Contrast (Shift+Alt+Command+L). This at a minimum will be a good starting place, but with any luck your done.

Not done? Ok, here is step number 3. What is it about the picture that is putting you off? Here are a few typical scenarios that both film and digital sensors tend to have trouble with. You shoot a couple sitting in the grass on a sunny day… their faces are an unhealthy shade of green. You shoot a bride and groom against a blue sky, late afternoon with a low sun and you have them facing directly into the sun so you can that popular, shadowless, flat light, healthy glow effect… and their faces come out orange. If you can recognize what color throwing you off the most, all you been to is go into the hue and saturation panel (Images ~ Adjustments ~ Hue and Saturation or Command+u) and lighten it up a bit, perhaps drop it’s saturation a smidgen.

Here’s a few examples:

In this example we see the unaltered image, scanned film, FUJICOLOR PRO 160S which is designed for warm, natural skin tones and a softer contrast. Not typically well suited to nature shots with lots of green.



With a quick auto contrast adjustment (Shift+Alt+Command+L) you can already see a great deal of improvement in the definition of the stem against the background and greater detail in the petals of the tulip. The background foliage also pops with life without detracting from the composition in the foreground.



For this final frame I simply applied an auto level adjustment (Shift+Command+L) which increases the contrast for greater definition but also cools off the hues considerably to give a more natural look to the vegetation,closer to the tone you would expect on the overcast day this was shot on. More impotantly, the whites are white, the pinks are pink, and the greens are green!

All in a matter of seconds I was able to fine tune the colors and tones without once opening the color balance pane.



* { In actual fact to make life easier we look for middle grey, otherwise known as 18% grey, but you get the idea. }

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