Color Variants & Color Changing

In photography, it can be rare to get a picture that is absolutely balanced where the whites of a picture are really white, and the blacks of a picture are really black.  This is because there are so many varying light sources as well as objects reflecting off of each other, mixing up colors in space.

The Match Color control in Photoshop can assist you alter colors in just one or in multiple photos. This only works in RGB mode.

With Color Range mode, you choose a color or color range from your original photo. This mode can also assist retouch subject’s faces, as it automatically detects and selects faces.

The Color Picker and Eyedropper are other Photoshop tools that you are able to utilize. In the end, it all depends on why you’re performing color correction post-processing techniques.

Here are some of our most common tools used; however for more advanced conversations we can look at color correction in even more detail. Remember that fixing pixels is almost like trying pick out a grain of sand. Sand has so many tiny particles of dark, medium and light bits, so one adjustment can affect the rest!
Levels: Using the Levels tool on Photoshop, we can drop down on the tab from RGB (Red – Green – Blue combo) to the isolated colors of Red, Green or Blue separately. Then we can adjust the toggle to enhance or reduce one color over the other.
Curves: Using the Curve tool on Photoshop, which is great for lighting adjustments, you can also use the drop down toggle to adjust highlights and contrasts of colors too. If you want all the shadows to look very blue for example, curves would be a great method for doing that.
Color Balance: It does what it says. We find this tool great but sometimes also too generalized so if we move the arrows to any one color direction; it affects quite a lot of the image. Sometimes it can be great, sometimes it can be a little harsh.
Replace Color: It does what it says. We find this tool great but sometimes also too generalized so if we move the arrows to any one color direction; it affects quite a lot of the image. Sometimes it can be great, sometimes it can be a little harsh.
Hue / Saturation: We probably know this term quite well by now because we see this same option in phone cameras and simple applications. Hue changes the overall color tone but in one fell swoop, while saturation gives you the option to have more intense or duller color tones for your image.