It’s not uncommon for an otherwise good photo to have a color cast—that is, to have all its tonal values shifted so it’s too blue, like Figure 7-14, or too orange.
Figure 7-14. Left: You may wind up with photos like this every once in a while if you forget to change your camera’s white balance—a special setting for the type of lighting conditions you’re shooting in (common settings are daylight, fluorescent, and so on). This is an outdoor photo taken with the camera set for tungsten indoor lighting. Right: Elements fixes that wicked color cast in a jiffy. The photo still needs other adjustments, but the color is back in the right ballpark.
Elements gives you several ways to correct color-cast problems:
Auto Color Correction doesn’t give you any control over the changes, but it often does a good job. To use it, go to Enhance→Auto Color Correction or press Shift+Ctrl+B/Shift-⌘-B.
The Raw Converter (The Raw Converter) may be the easiest way to fix problems, though it works only on Raw, JPEG, and TIFF files. Just run your photo through the Raw Converter and adjust its white balance there.
Levels gives you the finest control of all. You can often eliminate a color cast by adjusting the individual color channels (as explained in the previous section) till the extra color is gone. The drawbacks are that Levels can be very fiddly for this sort of work; sometimes this method doesn’t work if the problem is severe; and it can take much longer than the other methods.
Remove Color Cast is a command designed specially for correcting a color cast with one click. The next section explains how to use it.
The Color Variations dialog box can help you figure out which colors you need more or less of, but it has some limitations. It’s covered on Using Color Variations.
The Photo Filter command gives you much more control than the Remove Color Cast command, and you can apply Photo Filters as Adjustment layers, too. Photo Filters are covered on Photo Filter.
The Average Blur Filter, used with a blend mode, lets you fix a color cast. As you’ll read on Color correcting with the Average Blur filter, it’s something like creating a custom photo filter.
Adjust Color for Skin Tone makes Elements adjust your photo based on the skin colors in the image. In practice, this adjustment is often more likely to introduce a color cast than to correct one, but if your photo has a slight bluish cast that’s visible in the subject’s skin (as explained on Adjusting Skin Tones), it may do the trick. This option works best for slight, annoying casts that are too subtle for the other methods in this list.
You can use any of these methods, but typically you’d start with Levels and then move on to the Remove Color Cast or Photo Filter command. To practice any of the fixes you’re about to learn, download the photo duneflowers.jpg from this book’s Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com.
This command uses an eyedropper to adjust the colors in your photo based on the pixels you click. With this method, you show Elements where a neutral color should be. As you saw with the flowers in Figure 7-14, Remove Color Cast can make a big difference with just one click. To use it:
Go to Enhance→Adjust Color→Remove Color Cast.
Your cursor should change to an eyedropper when you move it over your photo. If it doesn’t, go to the dialog box and click the eyedropper icon.
Click an area that should be gray, white, or black.
You only have to click once in your photo for this feature to work. As with the Levels eyedropper tool, click an area that should be gray, white, or black (as opposed to looking for an area that’s currently one of these colors). If the image has several of these, you can try clicking different spots in your photo. Just click Reset in between each sample until you find the spot that gives you the most natural-looking color.
Click OK.
Remove Color Cast works pretty well if your image has areas that should be black, white, or gray, even if they’re tiny. The tricky thing is when you have an image that doesn’t have any areas that should be one of those colors to sample. If that’s the case, consider using the Photo Filter command (Photo Filter) instead.
The Color Variations dialog box (Figure 7-15) appeals to many Elements beginners because it gives you visual clues about how to fix the color in your photo. You just click the little preview thumbnail that shows the color balance you like best and Elements applies the necessary change to make your photo look like that thumbnail.
Figure 7-15. You’ll often do better using the Quick Fix window to make the same kinds of changes you can make with Color Variations, but Color Variations is handy because you can see exactly what your photo needs—in this case, a little less red and a bit more lightness. The after photo is bluer than you’d probably want it to be. In that case, click Reset Image and move the slider in the lower-left corner of the dialog box to the left a bit and then try again.
But Color Variations has some pretty severe limitations, most notably the microscopic size of the thumbnails. Because of that, it’s hard to see what you’re doing, so even newcomers can usually get better results in Quick Fix (Adding Canvas).
Still, Color Variations is useful when you know something isn’t right with your photo’s color, but you can’t quite figure out what to do about it. And because it’s adjustable, Color Variations is good for when you do know what you want, but want to make only a tiny change to your photo’s color. To use Color Variations:
Open a photo and create a duplicate layer.
You probably want to make a duplicate layer for the adjustments (Ctrl+J/⌘-J) so that you’ll have the option of discarding the changes if you’re not happy with them. If you decide not to work on a duplicate, remember that you won’t be able to undo these changes after you close the file.
Go to Enhance→Adjust Color→Color Variations.
Elements displays the dialog box pictured in Figure 7-15.
Under “Select area of image to adjust,” click a radio button to choose whether to adjust midtones, shadows, highlights, or saturation.
Color Variations automatically selects Midtones, which is usually what you want. But experiment with the other settings to see what they do. The Saturation button works just like Saturation in Quick Fix (Balancing color).
Use the slider at the bottom of the dialog box to control how drastic the change should be.
The farther right you drag the slider, the more dramatic the change. Usually, just a smidgen is enough to make a noticeable change.
Below where it says “Use buttons below to adjust your image,” click one of the thumbnails to make your photo look like it.
You can always click the Undo or Redo buttons on the right side of the window, or click Reset Image to put your photo back to where it was when you started.
When you’re happy with the result, click OK.