Photo Color Correction

The Power of Adobe Photoshop Unleashed

The above picture was taken by a professional photographer using an expensive professional camera. Just because a professional photographer uses a professional camera does not necessarily mean his pictures are ready for publication. The image was licensed without color correction. Just because a big business licenses images, does not necessarily mean they are fit for publication online.

How to Fix The Picture

1. Start by observing the original image to see if it is in such bad condition, it would be impossible to properly fix. In this case there are no parts that are either too dark or blown-out white spots. It has issues but it can be corrected.

2. Throw Auto Levels at it and see what happens. Many photography sins can be covered by AL. It's a very quick and easy adjustment layer to apply. Moreover, even if it doesn't give you a perfect image, it can still point you in the right direction to see what exactly must be done. (If you haven't already done so, you should make an action for AL, because you'll end up using it very often.)

AL brightened everything considerably, but it also made her skin tone even more saturated with a nasty bright orange hue.

3. Add an adjustment layer for Hue/Saturation, and choose Reds. Move the slider to the left until her complexion is more natural. Here it was set to -50:

Charlize looks much better now, but still a little flushed. Further desaturation, however, only makes her washed out and the whole picture flat. One solution is to edit the same layer, but not the Reds:

Hue/Saturation > Master > Hue > +4

4. Examine color reference points. The subject was clearly photographed in front of a white banner with black text. The accuracy of both can be used as a guide to the accuracy of the entire image. You can quickly click on the eyedropper tool and palette to discover how precise the color really is. It will rarely be "perfect" but it's a very useful testing method, and typically the best available under the circumstances.

Note: The monitor used for correcting the above images was calibrated using ColorVision Spyder2Pro Studio: Professional Color Calibration System for CRT and LCD Displays. If the above final image does not look better on your monitor, it has not been calibrated properly, and you need to get ColorVision or similar hardware before proceeding to the tutorials.