The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Removing Color Casts with One Click

This is kind of a weird trick, because the tool we're going to use was designed to match the overall tone of one photo to another photo (so if you shot one photo at dusk, and one just after lunch, you could have the afternoon shot match the warm tones of the sunset shot, or vice versa). However, in this case, we're only going to use one photo (so we're not matching it to anything), but we're going to use it to remove our color cast anyway. I know. It's weird. But it works.

Step One

Start by opening a photo that has a strong color cast. In the example shown here, the motorcycle was shot through a store window at night, on a tripod, with no flash, so the color cast is created by the in-store lighting, which gives the photo its strong yellowish-reddish cast.

[View full size image]

Step Two

Go under the Image menu, under Adjustments, and choose Match Color.

Step Three

Are you ready for your "one click?" Just turn on the checkbox for Neutralize, and the color cast is gone (basically, you neutralized the color cast). Now, the only bad thing you may encounter here is that it does "too good of a job." By that, I mean when it removes the color cast, it really removes it, and on some photos it seems like it took a little too much cast out, leaving the photo feeling a bit cold. If that's the case with your photo, go on to the next step.

[View full size image]

Step Four

If Color Match took too much color out, drag the Fade slider slowly to the right until some of the color comes back (think of this Fade slider as "undo on a slider"the farther you drag it to the right, the more it "undoes"). If your colors still look washed out, then drag the Color Intensity slider to the right a little to quickly bring them back. When it looks good to you, click OK.

Before

After