Photo Correction 101: Color Balance

Lets look at another photograph that needs some color correction done to it:

This photograph was taken at a lake in North Georgia, USA. There are some contrast and color problems with it. As you can probably see, a lot of the image seems kind of blue rather than the bright green it truly is. Before we go into using the Color Balance Adjustment Layers, take a look at what happens when you try auto color on this photograph is Adobe Photoshop:

Photoshop's Auto Color makes this photograph look like it was taken in the fall rather than in the early summer. Although it seems to get rid of the blue quite well, it overdoes it and balances it with way to much red. Instead of using Photoshop's Auto Color tool, let's add a Color Balance Adjustment Layer:

(Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Balance)

After naming your color balance layer, a settings box will appear such as the one shown in the diagram below. In this settings box, you are given three sets of tonal ranges to adjust color in (Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights). In each tonal range, you are given 3 sliders. By moving the slider towards a color, you will increase the amount of that color in your photograph. Likewise, by moving a slider away from a color, you will decrease the amount of that color in the photograph.

Here are the adjustments I made in my Color Balance Settings:

And here are the results once these settings were applied to the photograph:

Now that is a huge improvement from what we had before. Even though the change is only subtle, you can easily see the difference in the color of the leaves. The ones shown on the left are much more vibrant than those on the right, and the blue has been removed almost entirely! The next portion of this tutorial will show you another useful way to correct colors using a brushing technique.

Section 9 "Color Replacement Tool"