Photo Color Correction

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial

Pure White Background

Dirty and discoloured backgrounds are very, very common, especially on the web, where pictures are the result of scans on cheap scanners which were never calibrated.

But even more expensive scanners which were calibrated don't always deliver pure white (or pure black) backgrounds.

Fortunately, these common problems are easy to solve in Photoshop, requiring little skill, time, or effort.

The photo of the kitten and kid below has a muddy background and a slight green tint. It should be pure white, but it looks dirty.

Copy the original photo (Right-Click-Copy)

New > File

Paste

Layer > New > Adjustment Layer > Levels > Auto

Just using the basic Auto Levels corrected most of the discoloration problem, taking away the green tint, but there is still a lot of "noise" in the background, and it is still not very clean. Noise not only looks bad, it also increases file size.

To remove the noise, crank up the Whites, by adjusting the third Input Level from 255 to 175, or until there is no noise left, even on the edges of the picture (far left and far right).

Change the midtone level to 1.2 for balance.

If you are unfamiliar with Photoshop, you might try to clean up an image like the one above by using the Magic Wand Tool. But this can take much longer, become more complicated, and doesn't usually deliver better results.

When you have a pure white background on a picture, it can be superimposed on other images or is ready to be used effectively in a photo montage.