Free tutorial! Fix white balance

Fix white balance

Don’t let annoying white balance blight what is an otherwise excellent image. Simply bring the Levels palette into play

When you have white balance issues, you will see a colour cast occur when one of the RGB colours is stronger than the others and usually happens when photos are taken under artificial light. With fluorescent lights this is often green and with tungsten lighting it will be yellow. If the flash is involved, you’re looking at a blue cast. However, as this example shows, you can also suffer from colour casts even if the photo is taken outside. Natural daylight is far from consistent and changes depending on location and time of day. For example, photos taken early in the morning will appear more ‘bluish’ than those taken at midday. As the day ends, colour will become redder and warmer. But in addition to the natural light, you have to think about location. Photos taken under a canopy of trees, for example, can suffer from a green colour cast.
Photoshop provides the perfect tools for removing these colour casts and bringing back your neutral, natural colours. We’re going to use the Levels palette here to restore this photo to its rightful glory, by neutralising and defining the black, white and middle grey points. Use this tutorial on colour faded or old pictures; you’ll be amazed what it can do.
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01 First things first

Click here to download the start image. Open it up Photoshop and take a good look where the problem areas are situated. The most obvious problem is the white in the car that has a yellow, greenish cast. Duplicate the layer by going to Layer>Duplicate Layer. Name the first layer Original and call the duplicate Retouch.

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02  Prepare the workspace

Pick the Eyedropper tool and set the Sample size to 3 x 3 Average. Bring up the Info palette and go to View>Fit On Screen. Now we’re ready for optimising the image.

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03  Levels

In the Image>Adjustment menu, bring up the Levels palette. In this dialog box, beneath the Auto button are three eyedropper tools; these are used to set the black, grey and white points of the image. Double-click on the Eyedropper at the left to set the black point.

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