Removing Color Cast
Color cast refers to a general shift of color to one extreme or another: an image can be said to have a yellow or red cast, for instance. While sometimes introduced into images intentionally (to create a certain mood or effect), color casts are usually unhappy accidents. They can result from any number of circumstances, from a scanner in need of calibrating to tired chemicals in a film developer's lab. Even light from a fluorescent bulb can create unwanted color shifts in photographs.
Thankfully, Photoshop Elements gives you a couple of ways to deal with color cast: a wonderful little automatic menu command, and a dialog box that allows you to manually color-correct your image by adding and subtracting color values in small increments.
To remove color cast with the Auto Color Correction command:
- From the Enhance menu, choose Auto Color Correction, or press Shift+Ctrl+B/Shift+Command+B (
Figure 3.36
).
Figure 3.36 Choose Auto Color Correction from the Enhance menu to automatically remove color cast from your image.
To remove color cast with the Color Variations dialog box:
- From the Enhance menu, choose Adjust Color > Color Variations.
- Determine the color cast of your image. As Elements doesn't offer any help in determining color cast, you're pretty much on your own here. Look for clues to color cast in objects or areas you are familiar with and can make good, educated guesses on. Ask yourself if that bright blue sky is looking a little yellow, or if those leafy greens have a little pink tinge to them, then work from there.
- In the lower portion of the dialog box, click on the thumbnail with the description that most describes what you need to do (Increase Red, Decrease Blue, and so on) while referring to the After view in the top half of the dialog box (
Figure 3.37
).
Figure 3.37 The core of the Color Variations dialog box is the lower, thumbnail button area. Each time you click a thumbnail you apply a slight color shift to your image. The thumbnails can be clicked any number of times and in any combination.
- Continue to click any combination of thumbnails, as many times as necessary, until the After view looks the way you like.
- Click OK to close the Color Variations dialog box and view your corrected image.