There are a huge number of types of processing of photo cards in Photoshop. Each person sooner or later finds a certain method that is convenient specifically for him. But in order to develop your own unique style, it is best to take a little bit of information from different sources. The most important thing to consider when creating your own professional processing algorithm is color correction in Photoshop. Learning this is not difficult, but it takes some time to master this skill.
Where to begin
Before performing color correction in Photoshop, you should carefully consider the style of processing a certain series of your photos. Surely you will happen to work on pictures of various subjects. Especially if you are a photographer. For summer shots, juicy, contrasting colors are best suited. The emphasis is preferably on green and blue (vegetation and sky).
The winter landscape goes well with cold shades of blue, or you can try using several options for a light turquoise. It will also look good to highlight details by changing the contrast in certain places or increasing shadows. Such an effect is remarkably superimposed on snow.
To decide how to make color correction in Photoshop, if the pictures are taken in any room, be sure to pay attention to the lighting. Warm shades of yellow and red will perfectly complement the photo, where rays of sunlight break through the windows or the interior has almost the same colors. Cold, dark tones such as brown, black or gray are used if it was originally planned to achieve such an effect (for example, if you chose the Gothic theme of shooting), or if the environment will be combined with such colors.
About what color correction in "Photoshop" is best done in a given situation, you can talk for a long time, since there are an infinite number of styles.
Color Correction Tools
In the program Adobe Photoshop there are some of the most necessary and functional virtual devices that help to process photos at the highest level. Among them:
- Brightness / contrast. In addition to correcting brightness, the tool helps reduce glare (too white areas) and remove too black shadows from the image. Makes your chosen colors rich and deep.
- The curves. The scheme containing the curved line helps to work out in detail the contrast of certain fragments in the image. With decent skills working with layers helps to achieve tremendous results.
- Hue / saturation. Can make pink bright red or even purple. With the help of this "assistant" it will turn out to change the color of hair or even clothes, to make it brighter, more interesting.
- Color balance. Ability to edit specific color tones. Various color variations in the work with the document can be observed when using universal sliders on color scales.
- Selective color correction. Detailed work with each primary color present in the illustration.
- Filters If you spend a small amount of time searching for the color filters you need on the Internet, you can achieve interesting photo effects, ranging from the effect of an old photo to the creation of various highlights.
It is important to note that an excellent result will be achieved when using all the tools together. Even beginners can take such actions, since gradually they will be able to find their own style and hone the skill of color grading photos in Photoshop.
Example of summer photo processing
Processing compositions using delicate, summer colors is very simple and fairly quick. Of course, it all depends on your skills and level of difficulty. To do this, we need to follow the simple steps outlined in this article. By the way, it will consider an algorithm for successful summer processing and color correction of photos in Photoshop.
Start. Removing Extra Shadows
It is not very beautiful when in the picture, instead of clothes, you can see only a solid dark spot, or a person’s hair resembles a black hole.
To fix this, you need to:
- Create a new layer (Ctrl + j).
- Select the "curves" item, which is located above the panel with layers.
- You will work on the appeared scheme with a line. Press the line with the cursor and pull it up slightly. Watch how the black colors in the photo change. It’s important not to overdo it.
- The whole picture will become much brighter. Next, invert the image (press Ctrl + i). You can see how the square on the “curves” layer turns from white to black, and the image takes its previous form. It should be so.
- Select the brush tool located on the left side of the screen.
- After choosing the right brush sizes, start by clicking on the left mouse button to accurately draw dark areas of the image. The darkness will begin to fade, the structure will return to the object.
It happens that the effect superimposed on the picture is too pronounced. If something similar happened in your case, then use the opacity slider. It is located on the right side, immediately above the line with the last layer you created.
After you lighten all the necessary objects, proceed to the next step.
Eye color correction
It often happens that the eyes in the photo are too dark or their color for some reason loses its saturation. Because of this, the image of the model in the pictures greatly fades.
A similar phenomenon can be eliminated as follows:
- You will again need to take a “brush”.
- Press the Q key.
- Hover over the eye and click the left mouse button a couple of times. It is important that you do not go beyond the eye iris.
- You will notice how the selected area turns red. All is correct.
- Select the second eye as well, then press the Q button again.
- Both eyes stand out in dashed lines. In the top menu, select the "selection" and press "invert" (or the keyboard shortcut Shift + Ctrl + i).
- Next, click on the "curves" again.
- Right-click on the appeared layer with curves and click on the item "create clipping mask ..."
- The layout of the curves will slightly change. It should be so. Start pulling the cursor line up, as in the step with shadows. You will see how only the eyes lighten. Lighten them as much as necessary in your case. If they were originally too light, pull the line down to darken.
Color saturation
If you think that the color of your eyes is not saturated enough, just select “hue / saturation”. Create a clipping mask for this layer and just as you darken / lighten, change the color saturation of the eyes using the sliders on the color correction panel. You can also change the intensity of these effects by using "opacity."
Selective color correction
Color correction in Photoshop includes many manipulations, but detailed editing of all the color shades of your photo is the most important procedure.
To edit colors you need:
- Select "custom color correction."
- In the menu that appears, move the sliders with color symbols in different directions with smooth hand movements. In the photo you will see how certain shades change.
- After you have walked through all the runners, click on the “red” item and select the next color in the list.
Move the sliders until you go through all the colors in the list and achieve the desired color balance. Do not forget to change the intensity of the layer if necessary.
Filters
But few people know how to make color correction in Photoshop even better quality and what is needed for this. Often editing photo using just the usual tools of a graphic editor is not enough. Not enough spectacularity or is it necessary to have a certain style that doesn’t work out in the usual way? There are various filters to solve this problem.
To use them, you need to select the necessary filters on the Internet and download them to your computer. After install them in your Photoshop. To complete this step, you need to open the Plugins directory. It is located in the Photoshop folder. Move the content you downloaded to the Plugins folder. After that, you can freely use plugins downloaded from the Internet.