- Before You Color Correct Anything, Do This First!
- Photo Quick Fix
- Getting a Visual Readout (Histogram) of Your Corrections
- Color Correcting Digital Camera Images
- Dave's Amazing Trick for Finding a Neutral Gray
- Studio Portrait Correction Made Simple
- Drag-and-Drop Instant Color Correction
- Adjusting Flesh Tones
- Warming Up (or Cooling Down) a Photo
- Color Correcting One Problem Area Fast!
- Getting a Better Conversion from Color to Black and White
- Correcting Color and Contrast Using Color Curves
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Color Correcting One Problem Area Fast!
This technique really comes in handy when shooting outdoor scenes because it lets you enhance the color in one particular area of the photo, while leaving the rest of the photo untouched. Real estate photographers often use this trick because they want to present a house on a bright, sunny day, but the weather doesn’t always cooperate. With this technique, a blown-out sky shot at daybreak can become a beautiful blue sky in just seconds.
Step One:
Open the image that has an area of color you would like to enhance, such as the sky.
© ISTOCKPHOTO/MICHAL ROZANSKI
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Step Two:
Go to the top of the Layers palette and choose Hue/Saturation from the Create Adjustment Layer pop-up menu (it’s the half-black/half-white circle icon). A new layer named “Hue/Saturation 1” will be added to your Layers palette and the Hue/Saturation dialog will appear.
Step Three:
From the Edit pop-up menu at the top of the Hue/Saturation dialog, choose the color that you want to enhance (Blues, Reds, etc.), then drag the Saturation slider to the right. You might also choose Cyans, Magentas, etc., from the Edit pop-up menu and do the same thing—drag the Saturation slider to the right, adding even more color. In the example here, I increased the saturation of the Blues to 70. When your image’s area looks as enhanced as you’d like it, click OK.
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Step Four:
Your area is now colorized, but so is everything else. That’s okay; you can fix that easily enough. Press the letter X until your Foreground color is set to black, then press Alt-Backspace (Mac: Option-Delete) to fill the Hue/Saturation layer mask with black. Doing this removes all the color that you just added, but now you can selectively add (actually paint) the color back in where you want it.
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Step Five:
Press the letter B to switch to the Brush tool. In the Options Bar, click the down-facing arrow to the right of the Brush thumbnail, and in the Brush Picker choose a large, soft-edged brush. Press X again to toggle your Foreground color to white, and begin painting over the areas where you want the color enhanced. As you paint, the version of your enhanced photo will appear. For well-defined areas, you may have to go to the Brush Picker again in the Options Bar to switch to a smaller, hard-edged brush.
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