Chapter 8. Color Correction

Photography: Howard Berman, Client: Intel Computer art: Robert Bowen, www.bowenstudio.com

The camera, you know, will never capture you. Photography, in my experience, has the miraculous power of transferring wine into water.

—Oscar Wilde in Lillie

In the previous chapter, “Color Management,” we learned how to make colors consistent among our various devices (monitor, scanner, printer, camera, and so on). In this chapter, we're dealing with color correction, which is an entirely separate matter. This chapter is all about controlling the colors in your image and getting rid of color casts that might be having an adverse effect on the final result.

After presenting hundreds of seminars, I've learned that the majority of people perform color correction by picking their favorite adjustment tool (Color Balance, Hue/Saturation, Curves, or the like) and then using a somewhat hit-or-miss technique. They blindly move a few sliders back and forth in the hope that their onscreen image will improve. If that doesn't work, they simply repeat the process with a different adjustment option. Those same people often turn to me asking for “advanced color-correction techniques” because they're frustrated and don't feel like they're really in control of the color in their images. If this describes the way you're adjusting your colors, you'll be pleasantly surprised when you learn about the science of professional color correction, where 95% of all guesswork is removed and where you know exactly which tool and what settings to use to achieve great color. First, let's look at a general concept that will help us to color correct an image. Then I'll walk you through the step-by-step technique I use to get good-looking color in Photoshop.