Learn to enhance your images with Photoshop's powerful color correction tools. This tutorial will introduce you to intuitive techniques like Color Balance and Brightness/Contrast adjustment.
Key Insights
- The tutorial covers creating adjustment layers for color correction, adjusting color balance, and adjusting brightness/contrast in Photoshop.
- The exercise uses a 'koalas.jpg' image to demonstrate color correction and balance adjustments.
- The color balance adjustment involves adding cyan and blue to the image using the Color Balance settings in the Properties panel.
- The tutorial further guides on cooling off the highlights of the image by also adding blue.
- The brightness/contrast adjustment includes brightening the image and creating a new layer through the Layer, New Adjustment Layer, and Brightness/Contrast pathway.
- The tutorial concludes with a guide on saving the edited image as a Photoshop document.
This exercise is excerpted from Noble Desktop’s past Photoshop training materials and is compatible with Photoshop updates through 2020. To learn current skills in Photoshop, check out our Photoshop Bootcamp and graphic design classes in NYC and live online.
Photoshop Essentials
-
Layers & Masks
Non-destructive editing with layer masks and adjustment layers.
-
Selections
Quick Select, lasso, pen, and Select Subject for precise isolation.
-
Color & Tone
Curves, Levels, and Hue/Saturation for pro-quality color work.
-
Smart Objects
Resize and transform without losing image quality.
Topics Covered in This Photoshop Tutorial:
Creating Adjustment Layers for Color Correction, Adjusting Color Balance, Adjusting Brightness/contrast
Exercise Preview
Photo by Dan Rodney
Exercise Overview
There are many ways to improve a photograph with Photoshop’s powerful color correction tools, some of which are easier to understand than others. This exercise will introduce you to a couple of the more intuitive techniques like Color Balance and Brightness/Contrast.
Intro to Color Correction
-
From the Photoshop Class folder, open koalas variations.png.
This file is a good visual aid to help beginners wrap their heads around color correction. It takes practice to start knowing which colors need to be adjusted in an image.
Take a moment and notice which examples look better and which colors need to be added or removed.
Close the file when you’re done.
Adjusting Color Balance
Open koalas.jpg.
Go into Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Balance.
-
Click OK.
The Properties panel will open with the Color Balance settings, as shown in the preview image at the beginning of the exercise. The default values are all zero.
You may have noticed in the example image that the More Cyan square looked better. Let’s start by adding more cyan. Drag the Cyan/Red slider to the left and set it at −40.
-
Now it’s looking a bit yellow. To remove yellow, we have to add blue. Drag the Yellow/Blue slider to the right and set it at +10.
The highlights are still a little warm, so let’s cool them off by adding blue.
From the menu next to Tone, choose Highlights.
Drag the Yellow/Blue slider to +20.
Adjusting Brightness/Contrast
Let’s brighten it up a bit. Go into Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast. Click OK to create a new layer.
On the right, in the Properties panel, move the Brightness slider to the right and set it to 10.
Click the eye
next to each of your adjustment layers a few times to view the difference. These koalas look much healthier now!
Do a File > Save As and name it yourname-koalas.psd, making sure to set Format (Mac) or Save as type (Windows) to Photoshop.
