- 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
Photo Quick Fix
Elements 6’s Quick Fix does exactly what it says. It quickly fixes your photos and it’s a great tool if you don’t have a lot of experience with color correction or fixing lighting and tonal issues. Basically, if you know that something is wrong but you’re not sure where to go, then give Quick Fix a try first. As you become more comfortable in Elements, you’ll outgrow Quick Fix and want to use Levels and Unsharp Mask and all that cool stuff, but if you’re new to Elements, Quick Fix can be a fantastic place to start.
Step One:
Open the photo that needs color correcting (in this example, our photo [shown below] needs the works—color correction, more contrast, and some sharpening). So, click on the Quick button on the Edit tab at the top of the Palette Bin to go to Quick Fix mode.
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Step Two:
The Quick Fix window shows you side-by-side, before-and-after versions of the photo you’re about to correct (before on the top or left, after on the bottom or right). If you don’t see this view, go to the View pop-up menu in the bottom left of the window and select Before & After (Horizontal or Vertical). To the right of your side-by-side preview is a group of nested palettes offering tonal and lighting fixes you can perform on your photo. Start with the General Fixes palette at the top. The star of this palette is Smart Fix. Click the Auto button and Smart Fix will automatically analyze the photo and try to balance the overall tone (adjusting the shadows and highlights), fixing any obvious color casts while it’s at it. In most cases, this feature does a surprisingly good job. There’s an Amount slider under Smart Fix that you can use to increase (or decrease) the effect of the Smart Fix.
© ISTOCKPHOTO/JENNIFER ARMAND
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Step Three:
If you apply Smart Fix and you’re not happy with the results, don’t try to stack more “fixes” on top of that—instead, click the Reset button that appears over the top-right corner of the After preview to reset the photo to how it looked when you first entered Quick Fix mode. If the color in your photo looks a little flat and needs more contrast, try the Auto button in the Levels category, found in the Lighting palette (the second palette down). I generally stay away from Auto Contrast, as Auto Levels seems to do a better job.
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Step Four:
Besides Auto Contrast, there’s another very powerful tool—the Lighten Shadows slider. Drag it to the right a bit, and watch how it opens up the dark shadow areas in your photo (mainly in their jackets here). When you’re done with the slider, click the green Commit checkmark in the palette header. Now, on to more Quick Fixing.
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Step Five:
The next palette down, Color, has an Auto button that (surprisingly enough) tries to remove color casts and improve contrast like Smart Fix and Levels do, but it goes a step further by including a midtones correction that can help reduce color casts in the midtone areas of your photo. Hit the Reset button to remove any corrections that you’ve made up to this point, and then try the Auto button in the Color palette. See if the grays in the photo don’t look grayer and less reddish. The sliders in the palette are mostly for creating special color effects (move the Hue slider and you’ll see what I mean). You can pretty much ignore these sliders unless you want to get “freaky” with your photos.
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Step Six:
After you’ve color corrected your photo (using the Auto buttons and the occasional slider), the final step is to sharpen your photo (by the way, to maintain the best quality, this should be the final step—the last thing you do in your correction process). Just click the Auto button in the Sharpen palette and watch the results. If the photo isn’t sharp enough for you, drag the Amount slider to the right to increase the amount of sharpening, but be careful—oversharpening can ruin the photo by becoming too obvious, and it can introduce color shifts and “halos” around objects.
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Step Seven:
There are a few other things you can do while you’re here (think of this as a one-stop shop for quickly fixing images). Along the bottom of the window are icons you can click to rotate your photo (this photo doesn’t need to be rotated, but hey, ya never know). In the General Fixes palette, there’s an Auto Red Eye Fix if your photo needs it. If you don’t like the results, try using the Red Eye Removal tool from the Toolbox on the left side of the window. Just click-and-drag over the problem area in your After preview for more red-eye control. Also, there are other tools: You know what the Zoom and Hand tools do (they zoom you in, and then move you around once you’re zoomed in), but you can also crop your photo by using the Crop tool within the After preview, so go ahead and crop your photo down a bit. Lastly, you can make a selection with the Quick Selection tool.
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Step Eight:
Okay, you’ve color corrected, fixed the contrast, sharpened your image, and even cropped it down to size. So how do you leave Quick Fix mode and return to the regular Elements 6 Editor? Click on the Full button at the top of the Palette Bin (to the left of the Quick button you clicked to get into Quick Fix mode). It basically applies all the changes to your photo and returns you to the normal editing mode.
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