Keep The Colors Of Your Photos Accurate

If you’re a casual shutterbug, you might have noticed that the colors in your photos can vary wildly. Under light bulbs and natural light, everything has an orange tint. Under fluorescent lights, everything seems pale and blue. The shade of yellow you get when you shoot a flower on a sunny day might be drastically different from the shade you get if you shoot the same flower on a cloudy day.

When your colors look off, it’s time to consider color correction.

For a quick and easy fix while shooting, simply change the white balance setting on your camera. White balance is how cameras adjust colors under different lighting situations, based on how it thinks white objects should look under those situations. This setting might be located via a dedicated “WB” button, or it might be hidden in the camera’s menu system. Every camera, from budget compact cameras to digital SLRs, offer several different white balance settings, usually including “Outdoors/Sunlight,” “Incandescent/Tungsten,” “Fluorescent,” and “Cloudy.” If you select the white balance setting that best describes your situation (“Incandescent/Tungsten” for shooting around light bulbs, “Cloudy” for overcast days, and so on), the camera will automatically adjust color levels and the final pictures you get will look much more accurate.

Some cameras also include “Manual” white balance settings, which let the user register a white subject under the lighting he plans to use adjusting much more accurately to those conditions. If your camera has a manual white balance mode and the lighting will be consistent through your shooting, this is the best way to adjust your colors. Get a white object, like a blank sheet of paper, and hold it approximately where you expect your subjects will be. Select the manual white balance mode and aim at the white object, making sure it’s the only thing in frame. Press the “Set” button (this button varies, but it will usually be shown on the camera’s screen when you shoot in manual white balance mode), and the camera will analyze the object and process the best color adjustments it needs to make under the current lighting conditions.

If you don’t set the white balance correctly when you take the picture, or if the colors still look slightly off, you can still fix them in Photoshop. The fastest and most simple way to correct colors is with Image > Adjustments > Auto Color, or pressing Shift + Ctrl + B. This will automatically adjust the colors in your picture to what Photoshop thinks is the best levels. Like most one-click solutions, this is only effective in certain situations, and isn’t the most reliable or powerful way to fix colors.

For an automated solution with more control, go into Image > Adjustments > Levels. Ignore the graph and the sliding triangles on the bottom of the graph. Instead, click on one of the three eyedroppers in the window. The black eyedropper samples a black object in the picture, and adjusts the color levels based on the assumption that the object is black. The white eyedropper does the same thing, but for white objects; it’s a form of post-production white balancing. The grey eyedropper makes adjustments based on a neutral grey color, like worn asphalt. Depending on where you take your samples and how black, white, or grey the sample is, this can produce multiple color corrections. Choose the one you think looks best and click OK to modify the picture (the changes aren’t permanent until you click OK, and even after that you can go back through the History palette).

For a bit more manual control, the Image > Adjustments > Color Balance menu lets you nudge the overall color levels of the picture in different directions. If the picture seems too warm, move the “Red” slider slowly towards “Cyan,” or move the “Blue” Slider slowly towards Blue. With three different color sliders to adjust, you have plenty of options without getting overwhelmed by histograms, levels, or curves.

You can also manually adjust the color levels in the Image > Adjustments > Levels menu. Under “Channel,” click on Red, Blue, or Green. The graph will show a histogram of the (red/blue/green) color channel. If you see empty spots on either end of the curve, move the black or white triangle (whichever is closer to the curve) to the spot just before the curve starts. If, instead of just a short gap, there’s a very long tail at the beginning or end of the curve, nudge the triangles just a bit closer to the curve and watch the colors change. If you push the levels too far, the picture can “posterize,” replacing the fine gradients of color in the image with jarring bands. If manual level adjustments still aren’t enough, you can adjust the color curves in the Image > Adjustments > Curves menu. The curves are even more finicky than the levels, and can do more damage than good to your picture if you don’t know what you’re doing.