Fixing a Color Cast
One of the most common color problems associated with digital
images and other varieties of photographs is color cast, a malady in
which one color pervades an image to an unrealistic or undesirable
degree. For example, an old photograph that has yellowed over the
years has a yellow cast. A snapshot captured outdoors using the
wrong light setting may suffer a blue czast.
Naturally, Photoshop supplies a solution—and a simple one at that.
The Color Balance adjustment is designed to neutralize a prevail-
ing color cast and restore the natural hue and saturation balance
to an image. Color Balance is available from either the Image menu
(by choosing Adjustments→Color Balance) or by creating a nonde-
structive adjustment layer directly from the Adjustments panel, as
we’ll do in the following exercise. Either way, Photoshop provides
access to three sliders that give you the ability to balance out colors
by considering them in juxtaposition to their color wheel opposites.
Figure 6-8.- Open an image. Open the file
shown in Figure 6-8 named Tough
boys.jpg, included in the Lesson
06 folder inside Lesson Files-PsCS5 1on1.
Captured in the cabin of a cruise ship under
decidedly annoying lighting conditions,
it nevertheless depicts my sons during a
delightfully masculine display of Arnold
Schwartzenegger– inspired strength and
Gary Cooper–esque silent confrontation
(respectively). Charming as the subjects
are, this image suffers from an unfortunate
too warm color skew that we’ll fix in the
course of this exercise. - Open the Adjustments panel. If it’s not al-
ready open, choose Window→Adjustments
to open the panel. You see a variety of ad-
justments to choose from, all of which are
applied to an entire image all at once. As we
saw in the preceding lesson, the adjustments
are applied on an independent layer that
can be turned off, moved within the layer
stack, or deleted altogether, thus earning
adjustments the status of “nondestructive
modification.”
Fixing a Color Cast 183