Note – Google Reader is still not working for me, so if I haven’t visited your blog and you’d like me to come visit, PLEASE leave a comment and I’ll hop on over!
Keshia of Domestic Photographic contacted me the other day with a request to remove the color cast from her adorable son’s body. I decided that these shots would be great for Touch-Up Tuesday because color casts can so easily be corrected if you know how to do it!
I essentially performed the same steps (minus a few variations including the crop on the second photo) on each of the photos using Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop Elements 7:
- Started in Adobe Camera Raw to adjust white balance. You can do this by using the eye dropper and clicking on an area of the photo that should be white, black or gray (we’ll use this same technique when removing the color cast).
- Adjusted the exposure, fill light, blacks and contrast (this varied in each photo so just adjust accordingly).
- I then opened the photo in PSE7 and duplicated my background layer (ctrl J).
- To remove a color cast, go to enhance, remove color cast and click on something that should be white, gray or black – I used the cake. This altered the photo just a little more from my previous white balance correction.
- I merged those layers (ctrl, shift, E) and ran Amy McMaster’s Squeaky Clean (with a few tweaks). I understand that this is no longer a “free” action, but it is my favorite tool for quick processing.
- I merged those layers and opened a Saturation adjustment layer. In that layer, I basically turned the yellow off. I filled a layer mask black (this keeps the yellow in tact) and used a soft white paint brush at 30% opacity to paint off the yellow on his arms and face. Honestly, this is probably the best technique for removing color casts.
- Finally, I ran Amy McMaster’s Berries N’ Cream action (because it’s another favorite and freebie). For these edits, I turned off the cream and berry layers, and then turned the raw sugar layer’s opacity down to 15%. I suppose I could have just done the remaining steps manually, but I’m lazy.
So, what questions do you have? I know that sometimes when I walk through my editing process, it sounds as if I’m speaking a foreign language…so, if you want to perform the same steps and don’t understand something, just let me know and I’ll walk you through it.
By the way, I resize and sharpen ALL of my photos before I bring them over to the web. There are some freebie actions out there that will resize and sharpen for you (I think Amy McMaster offers one or two of them) – I prefer to run mine manually so I can control the size. If you want to know more, let me know.
Now, with all that said, go see my friend Karli for more Touch-Up Tuesday entries!
