Color Correction

Light is basically of two types, cool and warm. Moonlight is bluish and is an example of cool light, whereas bulb light or incandescent light has an yellowish hue and is an example of warm light. The spectrum of light affects the appearance of color in your photographs and there may be a requirement of a color correction.

Variations Tool is a color correction tool. To open the variation tool palette select Image > Adjust > Variations. Two thumbnails and some controls are displayed.

• Original. Displays open image before correction.
• Current Pick. Displays result of last correction.
• Range. Allows you to target the shadows, highlights, Midtones or saturation.
• Sensitivity. Makes changes subtle or drastic.

You can experiment with the settings to have the desired effect.

Color Balance is a tool for color correction which is easy to use but lacks the ability to target a specific tone.

Hue saturation tool gives control over three areas of the image.

• Hue The actual color.
• Saturation. The quantity of the color. Oversaturated images have to much of a particular color or colors and appear unreal.
• Brightness/Lightness/darkness. Shifts everything across the board and hence not recommended for correcting image brightness.

Adjusting Color with Curves is the most accurate but tricky way. You can go into each color channel and adjust it individually. To use this choose Image > Adjust > Curves. In the curves dialog box drag the mouse over the area with the most color cast, and you will see the circle on the curve indicating the range. Click the channel to open the drop-down list and choose each channel one at a time to see the adjustment point on each channel. Make adjustments to each of the color channels.

• If the color shows high on a color curve, it should be darkened to neutralize it.
• If the point is around the middle of the curve, it is already neutral and will not require any adjustment normally.
• If the point shows low on the curve it should be brightened to neutralise.