Fixing Incorrect Colour Balance
In this section, you will become familiar with editing photos in order to try and fix some common issues that amateur photos will bring. You must learn how to use white balance and to try to regulate a photo's colour balancing properties. The image shown below is also available as a downloadable file and you must balance the colour to the best of your ability.
| bad_colour_balance_.png |
Step 1
Download the photo above and import that into Photoshop - Once you have imported the photo, quickly save the project by saving it in your H: Drive. Give it a title that you can easily identify such as "Colour Balance - <Your Name>".
Step 2
Create a new layer by clicking the "New Layer" icon in the Layers pallette. We now want to fill our image with 50% Gray so do the following from the main menu:
• Edit -> Fill
• Choose 50% Gray in the Contents drop down menu
• Blend Mode: Normal
• Opacity: 100%
and click okay. You should now have a gray rectangle covering the photo of the baby.
• Edit -> Fill
• Choose 50% Gray in the Contents drop down menu
• Blend Mode: Normal
• Opacity: 100%
and click okay. You should now have a gray rectangle covering the photo of the baby.
Step 3
Your next step is to change the blend mode from 'Normal' to 'Difference'. I know this makes the photo look very weird but this blend mode will assist us in differentiating the white and black levels in our image.
Step 4
Add a new adjustment layer found at the bottom of the layers pallette which looks like a circle with a half-full/half-empty look and choose "threshold" from that list.
Set the threshold all the way to the left so your image goes completely white. Now, slowly move the slider to the right until you're in the range of 20-30. This will uncover the darkest parts of our image which we need to set our 'Black Level'
Select the Eyedropper Tool from the tools palette on the left and zoom into one of the darker parts of image - you can see from the photo below where I decided to obtain my black level.
With the Eyedropper tool selected, zoom into the area you want to sample, I use CTRL+1 to zoom in 100% and then move my canvas window but any tool will work. I then hold SHIFT and click which places a sample point on the image.
Set the threshold all the way to the left so your image goes completely white. Now, slowly move the slider to the right until you're in the range of 20-30. This will uncover the darkest parts of our image which we need to set our 'Black Level'
Select the Eyedropper Tool from the tools palette on the left and zoom into one of the darker parts of image - you can see from the photo below where I decided to obtain my black level.
With the Eyedropper tool selected, zoom into the area you want to sample, I use CTRL+1 to zoom in 100% and then move my canvas window but any tool will work. I then hold SHIFT and click which places a sample point on the image.
Step 5
Hide the threshold and the Gray layer you created earlier by clicking the eyeball in the layers palette for now. Select the layer which contains the baby photo - most likely called Background or Layer 0 - in order to make it active. once active, add a "Curves" adjustment layer by once again clicking on the circle icon in the layers palette but this time, choose "Curves" instead of "Threshold".
Now that the Curves adjustment layer has been added, a properties window should appear that will now allow you to modify our curves in the image.
Now that the Curves adjustment layer has been added, a properties window should appear that will now allow you to modify our curves in the image.
The image above shows three eyedropper samples - the Whites, Blacks, and Grays in our image can be sampled using these. We want to use the gray which is shown circled above. So, we take the grey eyedropper and we zoom back in very closely to where we placed our initial sample point and we want to click in the exact same spot again.
Step 6
You're done! if you followed the steps correctly then you should have been able to correctly colour correct the photo into a more pleasing image as shown below. This might seem like a tedious process - however unless we shoot RAW in the cameras, this will be the quickest way o white balance a photo.
Save your work and submit via the website as a JPEG when complete!
Save your work and submit via the website as a JPEG when complete!
