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Page 1 of 3 Tutorial Information: - Basic color correction methods for optimizing an image.
- Photoshop Version CS2 used (works for many versions).
- Goes over general work flow, inluding optimizing for exposure, contrast and color correction.
- Non destructive image optimization
- You should acquire some knowledge of Photoshop's interface before using this tutorial. All images in this tutorial can be clicked on to enlarge for better visibility.
I call this tutorial Basic Color Correction although the name is a tad missleading. This tutorial is actually a little more advanced than the basic way some have gone about optimizing their images. If you have been one of those people optimizing your images by going to Image> Adjustment> Auto Levels and Image> Adjustment> Auto Curves, then you've been going about it the very basic way. This tutorial will show you how to properly optimize your images for exposure, contrast and color the RIGHT way. I promise you once you've learned these techniques you'll never want to go back to that basic "non controlled" and destructive method. So without any further ado, lets begin! Step 1. (Exposure) You can begin this tutorial by downloading the following image provided here. This tutorial will work for almost any image, but for follow along reasons it's best that we're working on the same image for this tut. Going to your layers palette on the right, at the bottom your going to want to click on the half circle icon to create a new adjustment layer. Then click the "Levels" option. See the image to the right here for an example of this.
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There is another way to reach this new adjustment layer option. On the top of Photoshop in the menus select the "Layer" option and go to "New Adjustment Layer" and choose levels from in there. Or any adjustment for that matter. This gives you an added option to create the adjustment for "Previous Layer" only in the dialog box that pops up. Very handy!
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Ok, after clicking on levels you will get a Levels dialog box that appears that contains a few options and a black mountain looking thing known as a histogram. This histogram is very important because it shows you the exposure of your image. Take a look at the image to the right here. The histogram has three sliders (they look like triangles right below the histogram) and I've labeled them A, B, and C in blue.
A. this first one is your darks.
B. this second one, in the middle, is your mid tones, or middle gray.
C. last one is your lights.
As you can see with the histogram, there are some flat areas. Areas where there is no black, or the black is completly flat. That means there is no tonal values in your image in those areas.
Making sure you Preview button is checked on the bottom right in this dialog, click and drag the left slider (A) to the right until it just barely touches the tip of the mountain slope. Now, with the right slider (C), click and drag to the left until it just reaches the slope of the mountain. Check this second image here to see how I've adjusted my sliders.
Great! Click ok and we can move on to the next page for our contrast adjustment. |  Levels Adjustment  Levels after adjustment |
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