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Dan Rodney/2 min read

Color Correction Using Color Balance

Photoshop Essentials

Layers & Masks

Non-destructive editing with layer masks and adjustment layers.

Selections

Quick Select, lasso, pen, and Select Subject for precise isolation.

Color & Tone

Curves, Levels, and Hue/Saturation for pro-quality color work.

Smart Objects

Resize and transform without losing image quality.

Master Photoshop at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop's Photoshop Bootcamp covers retouching, compositing, color correction, and pro editing.

Improve your Photoshop skills with this comprehensive tutorial that covers color correction techniques like color balance and brightness/contrast adjustments.

Topics Covered in This Photoshop Tutorial:

Creating Adjustment Layers for Color Correction, Adjusting Color Balance, Adjusting Brightness/contrast

Exercise Preview

color balance exercise preview

Photo by Dan Rodney

Exercise Overview

There are many ways to improve a photograph with Photoshop’s powerful color correction tools, some of which are easier to understand than others. This exercise will introduce you to a couple of the more intuitive techniques like Color Balance and Brightness/Contrast.

Intro to Color Correction

  1. From the Photoshop Class folder, open koalas variations.png.

    This file is a good visual aid to help beginners wrap their heads around color correction. It takes practice to start knowing which colors need to be adjusted in an image.

  2. Take a moment and notice which examples look better and which colors need to be added or removed.

  3. Close the file when you’re done.

Adjusting Color Balance

  1. Open koalas.jpg.

  2. Go into Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Balance.

  3. Click OK.

    The Properties panel will open with the Color Balance settings, as shown in the preview image at the beginning of the exercise. The default values are all zero.

  4. You may have noticed in the example image that the More Cyan square looked better. Let’s start by adding more cyan. Drag the Cyan/Red slider to the left and set it at −40.

  5. Now it’s looking a bit yellow. To remove yellow, we have to add blue. Drag the Yellow/Blue slider to the right and set it at +10.

    The highlights are still a little warm, so let’s cool them off by adding blue.

  6. From the menu next to Tone, choose Highlights.

  7. Drag the Yellow/Blue slider to +20.

Adjusting Brightness/Contrast

  1. Let’s brighten it up a bit. Go into Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast. Click OK to create a new layer.

  2. On the right, in the Properties panel, move the Brightness slider to the right and set it to 10.

  3. Click the eye eye hide show icon next to each of your adjustment layers a few times to view the difference. These koalas look much healthier now!

  4. Do a File > Save As and name it yourname-koalas.psd, making sure to set Format (Mac) or Save as type (Windows) to Photoshop.