Color correction is a lot easier than you think. You just
need to know which colors are complimentary (meaning on the opposite end of the
color wheel) and you can use those to cancel out too much of another color. (If
you need a refresher on color, check out our color guide.) You also need to be
able to spot where colors are the most prominent. This means being able to
tell, for example, when red is dominating the light areas of the photo and blue
is dominating the dark areas. If you simple applied a blue filter to the entire
photo, you'd end up with more neutral highlights—which you want—but a photo
that looks too cool because the shadows are overly saturated with blue color.
To recap, you need to pay attention to two major things when color correcting:
which colors are dominating the photograph and which colors aren't, and also
where, tonally, those dominating colors exist.
This is something you
can generally do just by eying the photo, but the proper method is to consult
the histogram. You can bring this up by going into the Window menu and choosing
Histogram. The left side represents the shadows, the right side the highlights,
leaving the middle for the midtones. If a particular color is dominating the
photo in any area, you'll see it dominating that space on the histogram. This
can be a handy guide for spotting necessary corrections.
Now that you've got a
basic idea of what we're going to be targeting, let's take a look at some of
the best color balancing tools Photoshop has to offer. You can find all the
adjustments we'll be discussing in the following places:
You can find standard adjustments that apply to a single
layer by going to the Image menu, choosing Adjustments, then choosing the
adjustment you want. If you want to create an adjustment layer that can apply
to multiple layers and be adjusted after the first application you can create
an adjustment layer. You can either do this by going into the Layers menu,
choosing Adjustment Layer, and then selecting the adjustment you want, or just
selecting the adjustment you want from the Adjustments palette.
Color Balance is not a very flexible tool, but sometimes you
just need minor adjustments to color and you can use Color Balance to apply
them quickly. If the brightest parts of your photo are just a little bit too
red —something that's common with photos taken in low light—you can just select
the Highlights radio button and then move the sliders towards cyan and blue a
bit until you start to see the colors look a bit more balanced and neutral. You
can also use Color Balance to create some interesting color effects by
emphasizing different colors in the shadows, midtones, and highlights. Play
around with it and get a feel for what it can do. It's not a tool you want to
use most of the time, since Curves will generally help you do everything better
and with more flexibility, but for quick changes Color Balance can definitely
be useful.
Levels
Levels is like Curves
(which we'll discuss next) with training wheels. You have three main sliders.
On the left, you have the shadows slider. Moving it to the right will increase
the intensity of the shadows. On the right, you have the highlights slider.
Moving it to the left will increase the intensity of the highlights of your
photo. In the middle, you have the midtones slider. Moving it to the left will
brighten up your photo and moving it to the right will make it darker. These
sliders mainly affect contrast. The sliders under Output Levels affect
brightness. Moving the black slider towards the white one will brighten things
up. Moving the white slider toward the black one will darken them. By default,
Levels applies any of these changes to the entire photo, but you can select a
specific color channel and alter it all by itself. There's a little drop-down
menu at the top of the Levels panel that lets you select from all channels—I'm
going to assume you're in the RGB color space and it says RGB—or each
individual channel (red, green, and blue). If you want to brighten or darken
just the reds, select the red channel and make your adjustments. To see a full
demonstration of how Levels works, watch the video.
Curves
Curves is definitely the best color correction tool you've
got in Photoshop, but you might find it a little intimidating and shy away from
it since Levels seems to work well enough. Trust me—curves is much better, so
take the time to get to know it and learn how it works so you're using it to do
most of your adjustments. It's powerful, versatile, and very easy to control
once you get the hang of it. That said, it works a lot like levels only you set
your own points. You can adjust the entire image or just specific channels,
just like you can in levels. To make a point on the curve, you just click
anywhere on the line and drag in a particular direction. If you pull towards
the top left corner, you'll brighten things up. If you pull down towards the bottom
right corner, you'll darken things. The middle of the line in curves represents
the mid tones. The bottom of the line, touching the bottom left corner,
represents the shadows. That would leave the top, which represents the
highlights. Here's an example of creating a simple curve: make a point at the
midpoint of the line and then two more points that are each about one grid
space away from the midpoint. Pull the bottom-most point down into the shadows
a bit and the top-most point up into the highlights. This will create basic
contrast and is the simplest adjustment you can make in curves. If you're
having trouble understanding how this works, you can see an example in your
Photoshop presets. At the top of the Curves window, you'll see a preset menu.
Choose "Strong Contrast" and you'll get a curve that's similar to the
one we just discussed. You should also check out the video at the top of this
post to see a full demonstration of Curves.
Auto Tone
Sometimes you can
just let Photoshop do a lot of the work for you. While you don't want to rely
on Photoshop's Auto Tone option, you can just chose it from the Image menu to
let Photoshop make an educated guess about what your photo needs in terms tone
and color adjustments. Sometimes you can save yourself a little time by just
using Auto Tone, but definitely don't rely on it. Sometimes it just gets it
right and it takes about two seconds to try it out and see if it works. If it
doesn't work, undo it, and do the corrections yourself. If it does work, you
just saved yourself some time.
I hope you enjoy the topic .
We provide all kind of image editing service by clippingexpert24.com. We provide chip rate service.
No comments:
Post a Comment