Use this trick to Fix color in any photo in 1 click in Photoshop, Lightroom or Camera Raw
Recently I did a video where I showed you guys how to use the nuetralize button (and I’ll put a link to it) to fix the color and any photo. And I got a lot of questions about it. One of them is will this Work in Camera Raw or Lightroom? No, But I have something very similar which works in Photoshop, Lightroom and Camera Raw.
We will use 2 photos, first image has a color tint applied for effect (you may or may not like it), but we will remove it as well as a second photo that is really bad .
Click on the adjustment layers in the Layers Panel and choose levels or curves.
The secret to what we’re doing is the eye dropper, just go down, grab the middle eyedropper. Which is our white balance tool.
All you want to do is drop this on an area that should be white, or neutral gray. The whites of the eyes work great.
Click once and boom, the color cast is removed. (The mid tones are now normal, but there is a separate color tint in the shadows and highlights (lets fix those too)
Let’s fix the contrast on this really easily
So we’ve got the three eye droppers. First you grab the black one.
You want to go to the darkest part of the image. To find the darkest point, Hold down the Alt or the Option key and drag on the black triangle in a histogram that’ll show you the darkest parts.
So, click with the black eyedropper on the darkest point. (you can see the shadow is a little blue)
The shadows are now fixed, the image may look a little yellow right now, but don’t worry, one more step).
Grab the white one. Lightest point. It’s going to be the background pop on there. Boom.
Contrast and color is fixed.
If it’s too contrasty, well, simply just pull back the layer opacity a little bit, dial it back in, or you can pull in the blacks a little bit and recover the whites a little bit in levels, the video above shows this.
Let me show you the second one. So we’re going to choose filter>camera raw
On the right panel, in Basic>White Balance, you will see the eyedropper tool
Find an area once again, which should be white or neutral. Click and that will get rid of the color cast.
Now, the color is fixed obviously, we need to brighten the darks, we will in the next example.
Tip: When fixing color in Photoshop, you can use Layer Blending modes. Duplicate the layer, color correct and then change to Color blending mode, now only the color will change and nothing else.
Here we are in Lightroom Classic.
Exactly the same thing, what you want to do is go to the develop module, grab that white balance tool,
click, removes the color cast.
And then, of course, we just want to recover our tones a little bit with the exposure and the shadow sliders.
This week was a simple, quick tutorial. This is not anything that’s even new in Photoshop. It’s been there forever and a lot of people miss it.
I hope you found it helpful. Do you like these simple tutorials? Let me know in the comments underneath
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Colin
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Great tip! I did not know this. So helpful, thank you, Colin!
Excellent tip, thank you. I am still amazed by the depth of your knowledge of Photoshop.
Bravo Colin! Another wonderful, simple to follow tutorial you’ve created. We are indebted to all of your hard work put in to your lessons.
Love the short lessons – and especially the written instructions rather than the video. (Some of us grew up learning from books rather than TV and are happier with something we can check back to without worrying about rewind keys. 🙂 )
The shorter ones are easier to provide written steps 🙂
I like it… so simple… so helpful!!
Great!!! so simplistic and yet, so effective!! I love it, Colin. Thanks!!!!!
I use that eye dropper tool quite often; nearly every day.
Thank you for your wonderful tips, I have learned so much from you. Stay well and safe, best wishes, Gerda Eilts
Colin you good ,you good ..what can I say
Regards
Emanuel Maria/South Africa