Quick color fix

Here are a couple of my favorite tricks for quickly fixing color in an image. We'll start with a picture of some deep-fried chicken nuggets taken in the kitchen under some heat lamps. This lent a very warm glow to the image (pun intended).

Going to Image>Adjustment and either Curves or Levels, you'll see three small buttons with eyedroppers on them. The black pointed eyedropper is to set the shadows and the white one is to set the highlights, but we select the grey one in the middle. This one set the grey point. The trick is to click somewhere in the picture that is a known neutral grey color - Grey hair or the shadow on a white shirt for example. It looks like we have an abundance of grey in this picture but you have to remember that chrome reflects and will pick up the color of the item reflected in it's surface. I'll click just inside the pan above the nugget trays and see what we get.

As you can see we have a vastly different image with one click but the chrome in the background is starting to look a little blue. This brings me to my second favorite trick - the Fade. Immediately after applying an effect or adjustment to an image go to the file menu and select Fade Effect or Adjustment, in this case it said Fade Curves. The Fade command will bring up a slider that gives you a before, all the way to the left, and an after, all the way to the right, look at your image. The cool thing is you can adjust it anywhere along the slider.

In our nuggets image I decided that 75% would bring back enough of the original warmth to make these tidbits look their most appetizing.

Set grey point used with the fade will make quick work of color correcting lots of images in a short time and I hope you'll find them useful additions to your Photoshop arsenal. Once you've gotten you image perfect depend onBestPrintingOnline to faithfully reproduce it in all it's splendor. Please visit our website and get an instant quote for all your digital and offset printing needs.