20 TIPS FOR FLAWLESS PHOTO EDITS
- USE COLOR BALANCE
TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
Getting colour right in photo editing is extremely
important, but Photoshop has plenty of built-in
tools to help you achieve great effects every time.
Freelance creative and student Tom Anders
Watkins (www.tomanders.com) has high praises
for the Color Balance tool – a simple yet effective
solution to achieving great colour. “You can
significantly change the mood and feel of any
image with a couple of slight tweaks. Granted that
the image is exposed correctly, Color Balance, if
used correctly, will help add an extra dynamic to
most photographs.
“This is a photograph I shot in Finland of my
little brother throwing rocks into a frozen lake. I
wanted to accentuate the cold (blues) and give the
photograph more of a dusky, evening feel (purples
and reds), [which was] done by playing with the
sliders. To add a little more advanced colour
correction, I often use the Selective Color tool to
get the right tone for more specific colours.
“It’s easy to overdo colour sometimes – with
great power comes great responsibility so to
speak – and there’s a fine line [between] making a
photograph looking too Photoshopped. A natural,
realistic look is what will make your audience feel
like they are there. If I’m not sure, what I’ll
sometimes do if the image is particularly tricky, is
make a couple of different versions, then flick
through them. Through comparison I can often tell
which version feels right.”
Correct perspective:symbols in the correct perspective on any “To place text or
feature, whether it is a phone or a building, I use the Vanishing Point filter on a new
layer and draw the area in the correct perspective. I then copy and pasted the
banana into the filter and inside the box, which placed it in the correct perspective”
Sharpening: “To sharpen the image I used a High
Pass filter. I duplicated the flattened image changing the blending mode to Soft Light/
Overlay. I converted to black and white, then used Filter>Other>High Pass. This way you can
see in real time how sharp you are making it”© Tom Anders