This guide will serve as an introduction to people who are not familiar with how to color balance their photos as well as serve as a refresher for those who are. Part 2 will feature more advanced techniques and methods to take your great looking photo and make it look incredible.
Step 1: Work with a high quality photo for best results
Color correction can only achieve so much. Don’t expect to take an overexposed grainy picture from your cell phone and turn it into a commercial grade stock photo. Digital editing can only improve an existing photo, not make a great photo out of a lousy one. Generally, the better the photo the less post production work it needs. Try to stay with photos that have a good range of value and color and are well exposed.
Step 2: Bring the photo into your image editing program
I’m using Photoshop CS3 for this example; however the tools for basic color correction and color balancing are fairly universal and have been around forever. Other alternatives to Photoshop CS3 are the low cost PhotoShop Elements as well as Gimp which is open source (free). The menus and functionality may be different across the various programs but the core principles for editing photos will be the same regardless of the platform.
If you are using a different application, please share your experiences in the comments so other people can benefit.
For this example I’m using an underwater photo of some soft coral shot off the Solomon Islands. Underwater photography provides a unique challenge for photographers because the ocean washes out the warm colors from the image.
Step 3: Color Balance the Photo
Go ahead and save a copy of the above photo if you’d like to follow the tutorial along exactly.
Add a levels adjustment layer by going to the Layers Menu > New Adjustment Layer > Levels. A levels layer will let you edit both the color and tonal range of the image. You can also use a Curves Adjustment Layer for this step. For those not familiar with the histogram, it’s basically a graph that plots the overall tonal value of your image. The goal of this step is to get an absolute black and white point in each one of the color channels (red/green/blue) to balance the over all color.
A quick overview of the levels palette:
- To Lighten or Darken the overall image, drag the midtones slider
- To Increase the Shadows drag the shadows slider
- To Increase the Highlights drag the highlights slider
- To Increase Contrast drag the shadows and highlights sliders toward each other
- Decrease Contrast drag the cutoff sliders toward each other
Now, from the channels drop down menu select the red channel. Notice on the histogram that the pixel data doesn’t really start to appear till about the 10 mark on the shadows slider and about 190 on the highlights slider. Drag the sliders in until they are sitting at the point where the color data starts to increase. It doesn’t have to be precise so don’t worry about getting it perfect. For now ignore the midtones slider in the color channels.
Color correct all 3 channels before you evaluate the result. The color in your image will look heavily skewed if you have only done 1 or 2 channels.
Now for the green
And the blue
Now that you’ve balanced the color in the color channels, you can adjust the overall shadows, midtones and highlights in the RGB channel. A little bit of contrast will help the image to pop, so drag the black and white point sliders closer together. In addition, the image is still a little too light, so adjusting the midtone slider to the right will darken it and bring out a lot more image detail.
And voila, a much improved image. Color correction is an important skill for any designer or photographer.
As good as it looks, I don’t think it’s quite ready for the cover of the National Geographic just yet. Be sure to not miss Part 2 where I cover more advanced techniques and methods for improving your images even further (get free updates via RSS or Email so you don’t miss part 2!).
Doing this type or retouch degrades the image if you’re working in 8bit. You can see the original three histogram as a long, even curves, but once you do the level adjustments you get lots of steps. This is gaps in the information that will lead to banding in your image.
You might be able to see it in the water, imagine the blue of the water blends over 25 shades of cyan, once you stretch the colour the gradient will only blend over 5 steps.
Almost every stage of retouch degrades an image if you’re not careful, start with RAW files or 16bit images whenever you can for colour correction. Once you’re happy with with colour, then convert to 8bit and you’ll have images with nicer gradients.
Good clear and simple article though.
I have used Levels in the past, but I always just used the RGB channel. I never really messed much with the color channels. Thanks for the info. I will use them from now on.
WOW! Great tutorial. I wish every tutorial was as clear and concise as yours! Thanks for sharing.
Great guide. I’ve never played with the individual color channels before, but I will now!
Excellent point on working with 16 bit color. Generally 8 bit works fine for web output (especially with jpg compression), but in a production/print environment you definitely need the extra color depth.
To everyone who hasn’t experimented with adjusting colors in the color channels yet, definitely get some practice in it. That’s one of the best ways to reproduce original color accurately or even achieve highly artistic results (which is something I will discuss more in depth in Part 2).
Thanks, this will be useful.
I look forward to the next post on using colour channels - I use them already and it’s always great to some guidance on aspects I might not have considered.
Cool tip. Never thought about doing it that way. kudos
Levels are pretty much the first place I go when editing JPEGs, but maybe not when I process RAW. I’ve never done the separate channels though, that’s a good idea.
Levels worked wonders for a photo I took through an aeroplane window. I haven’t posted that photo yet, but if I do I’ll link to it.
I use GIMP; the process is essentially the same. There’s no adjustment layers, so usually I duplicate the main layer to make sure I can go back easily. In the menu it’s Colors > Levels.
GIMP can only do 8 bit (or has only been able to do that in the past) so some info is lost, which isn’t really a problem for web. Since GIMP doesn’t do CMYK either (without a work around) it’s not really prime for print anyway… both 16bit and CMYK support are on their way though.
@Anthony, I’m curious how you have done color correction before if not this way. With curves maybe? I have yet to gain a firm understanding of color correction with curves, but I know it’s one of the best ways to do it (besides working with RAW as Mark mentioned).
@Kris, YES! I never work directly on the original layer either, just in case.
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[…] trouble getting your digital photograph colors right, Jerrol Krause comes to the rescue with his quick and easy guide to color correction part 1 and part 2. Although Jerrol uses Photoshop CS3 for his examples, any decent graphics program will […]