In the previous session, we talked about tonal adjustments and that in general or things that had to do with brightness and contrast now in doing that we always get distracted and have to do a couple things relating to color no so we did take a few deviations, but now we're going to concentrate on color and so let's look at some images that needs some help color wise and see how we can deal with them first if it's a modern photograph taken with either a digital camera or some camera that you know the picture isn't overly faded or something where it really needs a rescue it just needs an adjustment then I would usually start in camera wrong if it's a truly vintage image that needs restoration, I might in some instances use camera, but it's not gonna have the future set, but I really need for those kinds of images. So first let's look at a few examples uh, let's see here first I have a raw file, so if I double click on a raw file, it should open this in camera and I want to initially mak...

e sure that I'm just on default settings and I am so with this particular image, I think there are some color issues and that it just doesn't look like the most attractive image color wise, this image is relatively easy because you remember when we talked about camera briefly, I mentioned white balance and there was a little eye dropper, and that eye dropper was designed to click on things that would be a shade of gray, regardless of how bright the shade of gray wass and that was the eyedropper in the upper left it's this one right here, that's knows the white balance eyedropper, and in this image with white dress, I think that's going to make that relatively easy, so I'm going to click on the white dress right now, just glancing at it. It looks to me like it could be bluish were slightly greenish color, and when I click, their photo shop will measure to see exactly what color is in that area. It'll shift the entire photograph away from that color until there is no longer a hint of color where I click, so when I clinic should improve the colors a bit and I contest a few different areas because the areas that are in the shade oh, the shadow areas will look slightly different than the areas there in the bright areas, so I'll just click around and see if I see a bit of a difference, but then I will say that helped a little bit get a little less bluish in this image, but then let's, figure out what else we could do. Well, first, this could use some sort of a total adjustment you see where the person is on the left, you can't really see much detail in his outfit, so remember when it comes to the adjustment sliders in camera raw exposure would affect the entire picture and I don't think the entire picture needs an adjustment of brightness in this case if you look at where the person is on the left it's mainly the dark parts and we have a slider for that was called shadows and saw bringing that up see if I can bring any shadow detail and just so you're aware it's not always useful, but if you find the mindset that we had with curves, remember with curves how we could click on a dark area to lock in its brightness and then we could click on a brighter and kind of drag it up like drag a dimmer switch up to brighten you do have that in camera there is an area over here called the tone curve and when I use this previously there these two little tabs and we use the one called parametric parametric is where we just had some sliders you adjust if you want to adjust curves like we did when we were all the way into photo shop using a curves adjustment layer then what you do and here instead is you choose this choice called point and there's, just a little bit. You need to know that it's not very obvious in here. So that's why I wanted to bring it up here, it's? Not that I think this particular image truly needs it. I just wanted to let you know if you ever need curves in here. There's a few tricks if I move my mouth on top of the image, you're going to find that not much is happening in the curve. That is, until I hold down the command key see that's controlling windows. So right now, if I move around this person, you'll find in curves nothing's happening, but if I hold on the command key, do you start to see a circle moving around? So you have to hold on command in order to get it to know that you want to think about the curve so I can move my mouse on top of the dark part of where he is, I can command click, and it allowed a dot if I didn't have command held down, it wouldn't have added the dots, then I could go to the brighter area I can command, click on it and drag upward. Uh, if it doesn't let me drag up or anything, I cannot come in here and manually move this is well to pull out details. This image, though I don't know that that's the best approach I just wanted to make sure you knew that in there is a curves and camera called the point curve. You can add dots to it by clicking on your image. But it's not obvious how to do it, it's that you have to know to hold down the command key if you're on a mac control of your windows. In this case, though, I think the shadow slaughter will be all right. You know, oftentimes when it comes to color adjustments, I find that I need to find to my colors by coming over here to this tab it's called the h s l tab. And in this particular photograph, I think the greens and the image are dominating the picture. I really think about the greens when I look at it and I would rather look at this image and think about the bride that's here for skin tone, her hair in that's everything so oftentimes in here all come into the h s l area and take the colors that are not important to my image and start bringing the saturation down. And the moment I start doing that in the greens by attention starts to go to the bride and not so much to the the greens and the surroundings. When it comes to green specifically, oftentimes I go to the tab called lou eminence, and I darkened them a bit in the combination of darkening the greens and making them less colorful under saturation. So luminous down a little saturation down a considerable amounts will make it so the greens air not so prominent in the picture. Now, in this particular case, I could go crazy with it. I could come in here and let's say I moved the saturation slider on every single color to zero negative one hundred should say that means take all these colors we used to have in our picture and pull out all him to color. Then I'm gonna come up here to the top of my screen on it if you remember this tool, but we used it on a previous image, this icon that's, the icon that makes it so instead of having to think about what slider to move to effect a particular area in the image, I can just move my mouse on top of the picture click and in this case I'm clicking on her hair and drag and I'll drag to the right to say let's, bring the color in just to the things that used to be that color. So I could do that, and then one thing we haven't done in camera is we haven't used the adjustment brush, it is often necessary, kameron we have a brush up here near the top of our screen, this guy, and that allows you to load up a brush with a particular adjustment and painted into your image. Now, it's going to remember whatever adjustment you last used it with, which might not be with this particular image needs. So after I choose that tool in the side over here, there's an icon that means there's a side menu hidden right here. If I click on that there's a choice, that's called reset local correction settings all that means zero out all these sliders, the sliders or what I'm about to paint into the image in that simply resets them, too. Defaults instead of whatever was used on last, and I'll just bring the saturation all the way down because we brought back some of the color in the bride. But some of those same colors air found in other areas of the background, especially right here and now I can just paint to remove them from those areas and if there's any other hints in other areas of the background. And then the final thing I might do is dark and the edges of the photographs so that my focus is more towards the bright bride in the middle. If I want to do that, I'll get out of the adjustment brush by just switching the either the zoom or the hand tools and then one of the tabs that we have in here is called effects in within effects I find post crop than getting which would allow me to darken up the edges of the photo the reason why I bring it out piece because I find a lot of people using it but there's some features that can help you make it more friendly that are not immediately apparent. So I'm in this tab called a fax I brought down the slider called amount which is darkening the edges a photo if I bring it way down you'll see the dark anymore dramatically I want to do it just a small amount and then down here you have sliders to control the shape in other qualities of this darkening and if you just move them sometimes it's so subtle it's hard to figure out exactly where you should put them but try this out if you hold on the option key alton windows you will then when you click on it seymour dramatic preview and it will be easier to calculate exactly where you should move that setting for your particular image what is doing this, it's, acting as if the amount sliders been turned all the way down, so you see a more dramatic version of it. So this is my kind of extreme version of this picture, because I found that just the green grass and other things weren't doing that much for it. Not everybody is into selective black and white look. So if you're one of those people, don't do that, just skipped that one portion. But I think just doing white balance on this image and adjusting the greens a bit with h s l helped out, and then I took it further. I just couldn't help it.

Class Materials

Bonus with Purchase

Handbook

Clone Source Shortcuts

Lens Flare Working Photo

Retouch Working Photo

buy this class

$00

Buy Class

Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2000+ more >

79.7K Students

99% Recommend this Class

00 Student Work

0 Video lessons in HD
00h 00m of class content
Exclusive bonus content
Lifetime access, anywhere, anytime
Streaming access on desktop and mobile browsers
Download and offline access with class purchase
Offline sync with our iPhone & iPad apps
100% satisfaction guarantee

Ben Willmore

As a photographer, Ben Willmore has shot in all 50 states and explored over 80 countries. He has been pushing Photoshop and Lightroom Classic to their limits since the beginning.

SEE INSTRUCTOR'S CLASSES

topics covered in this class

Fundamentals Adobe Photoshop Beginner Photo Editing

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student

Wow! That is pretty much what I thought about the course. It was my first live studio experience and it was fantastic! Ben is a great instructor because he presents the information in a straight forward manner that is understandable, detailed, and concise all at the same time. I have a couple of his other classes and the handbooks his wife creates are exemplary and make going back and reviewing the rebroadcast so much easier. Also, I want to give a shout off to the Creative Live team...Kudos! They are an excellent host...they are professional and fun at the same time! The content they produce has helped me tremendously to expand my knowledge and skills and mostly importantly they are affordable!

Old_Redeye

Ben is one of my favorite instructors on CreativeLive. (That's saying a LOT because they are all so good!). Besides being very thorough and understandable, Ben sets himself apart with two things. 1. He thoroughly demonstrates a process, then does a recap of all the steps he just took. That makes it much easier to remember. 2. His wife takes notes during the broadcast and creates a handbook which is available to download when you purchase the course. Some people find it easier to learn by reading than by re-watching the video. I like it because I can find information by using a word search. I feel so fortunate that I was able to sit in the audience for this class. It was great to be able to talk directly to the instructor and interact with the other students.

Wilson Blackwell

Super class! Ben is the best at explaining Photoshop and how to make full use of it. This class included techniques I've never seen or heard explained in other photo restoration classes I've taken. And the accompanying book, while I've only glimpsed through it so far, is expansive, well laid out, attractive, and looks to cover everything Ben went over in the class - it's a valuable resource as well (thank you, Karen Willmore, for all the effort you put in to produce a worthy complement to what Ben teaches.)

2,000+ classes ranging from fundamentals to advanced techniques.

Color Rescue & White Balance in Adobe Camera Raw

Color Rescue & White Balance in Adobe Camera Raw

Lesson Info

6. Color Rescue & White Balance in Adobe Camera Raw

Lessons

Class Introduction

Tonal Rescue & Noise Reduction in Adobe Camera Raw

Retouch a Hazy Image in Adobe Camera Raw

Recover the Brightness Range with Levels in Adobe Photoshop

Use Curves to Restore Details on Vintage Images