Gain insight into Photoshop's color correction tools and adjust color balance and brightness/contrast in your images with this comprehensive tutorial.
This exercise is excerpted from Noble Desktop’s Adobe Photoshop training materials and is compatible with Photoshop updates through 2023. To learn current skills in Photoshop with hands-on training, check out our Photoshop Bootcamp, Graphic Design Certificate, and graphic design classes in-person and live online.
Note: These materials are provided to give prospective students a sense of how we structure our class exercises and supplementary materials. During the course, you will get access to the accompanying class files, live instructor demonstrations, and hands-on instruction.
Topics covered in this Photoshop tutorial:
Creating adjustment layers for color correction, Adjusting color balance, Adjusting brightness/contrast
Exercise Preview
Photo Copyright © Dan Rodney, danrodney.com
Exercise Overview
There are many ways to improve a photo with Photoshop’s powerful color correction tools, some of which are easier to understand than others. In this exercise you’ll learn some of the more intuitive techniques like Color Balance and Brightness/Contrast.
Intro to Color Correction
- From the Photoshop Class folder, open 2C Koalas variations.png.
-
Choose View > Fit on Screen.
This file is a good visual aid to help beginners understand color correction. It takes practice to start knowing which colors need to be adjusted in an image.
Take a moment and notice which examples look better and which colors need to be added or removed.
Close the file when you’re done.
Adjusting Color Balance
Open 2C Koalas.jpg.
-
At the bottom of the Layers panel, click the Create new fill or adjustment layer button
, and from the menu, choose Color Balance.The Properties panel will open on the right with the Color Balance settings. The default values are all zero.
You may have noticed in the example image that the More Cyan square looked better. Let’s start by adding more cyan. Drag the Cyan/Red slider to the left and set it at −40.
-
Now it’s looking a bit yellow. To remove yellow, we have to add blue. Drag the Yellow/Blue slider to the right and set it at +10.
The highlights are still a little warm, so let’s cool them off by adding blue.
At the top of the Properties panel, from the Tone menu choose Highlights.
Drag the Yellow/Blue slider to +20.
Click the eye
next to the Color Balance 1 layer a few times to see the difference. The color looks more accurate now.
Adjusting Brightness/Contrast
Let’s brighten the image up a bit.
At the bottom of the Layers panel, click the Create new fill or adjustment layer button
, and from the menu, choose Brightness/Contrast.In the Properties panel, drag the Brightness slider to the right and set it to 10.
Click the eye
next to the Brightness/Contrast 1 layer a few times to see the difference.Do a File > Save As and name it yourname-koalas.psd, making sure to set Format (Mac) or Save as type (Windows) to Photoshop.