How to Remove a Yellow Cast from Night Pictures

Using a Photoshop Adjustment Layer for Quick Color Fix


Before	After

Yellow is the color which interferes with pictures taken during the evening or night more than anything. It can happen due to the natural evening sunlight from a sunset or simply electric lighting that has a yellow cast.

A quick review of the colors in this photo shows the man's white shirt doesn't look clean. His face also looks too yellow, and even the blacks don't look right. They aren't jet black. Because the integrity of both the blacks and whites are compromised, you have a clue about how to solve the problem.

If you're not sure which colors are off, just click on the photo layer and then click on the Color Picker. Then click on any part of the photo, like the white shirt, and you'll see yellow.

To purify the picture, add an adjustment layer which removes yellow for shadows, midtones, and highlights. (Yellow casts from one light source generally affect all tonal levels.) You can do this with a Color Balance layer by shifting the slider from Yellow to Blue by +5 for all three categories of Tone Balance.

Mac Photoshop Action: removeyellowcast.atn
(Right-Click Download Linked File As)

Applying this layer makes a good improvement, but it doesn't look like it's quite enough. Duplicating the layer doubles the effect, but that's slightly too much.

Instead of opening the Color Balance dialog box and changing the values, you can just change the opacity of the layer like you normally do for any layer by pressing a number that corresponds to the percentage of the opacity; e.g., "4" for 40% or "5" for 50%. Below is the final changed version after using 40% for the second Color Balance layer.

Do remember to check the colors with a Color Picker afterwards to make sure you don't go too far and "overcorrect."