The ability to make a color adjustment to your photo prints has never been easier. Photoshop allows you to actually watch the colors change as you adjust them. The directions below will walk you through a simple yet easy way of color correcting a RGB photo file in Photoshop. This method of adjusting color to print photos should be performed on a calibrated computer monitor.
Instructions
1. Open the photograph in need of a color adjustment in Photoshop.
2. Add a color adjustment layer. From the menu bar, select Layer, New Adjustment Layer and Color Balance. A window will open. Press OK and a box titled Color Balance will become visible.
3. Slide Color Balance box to the right so that you can see your entire photograph again.
4. Evaluate your photo for colors that need adjusting by examining the highlights of the photo. Decide if you see a cast of Cyan, Red, Magenta, Green, Yellow or Blue in the highlight areas.
5. In the previously opened Color Balance box, make sure that Midtones, Preserve Luminosity and Preview are selected.
6. Gently move the slider away from the color that appears to be dominating the highlight areas of the photo you will be printing. For example, if your highlights appear to be too yellow, cancel out the yellow by adding a touch of blue until the yellow colorcast disappears from the photo's highlight. Continue this process until the highlight areas of your photo look perfectly white and click OK when you are finished.
7. Save the color corrected image. It is a good idea to save your color corrected image as a copy with a slightly different name to prevent losing your original file.
8. Print the image on high quality photo paper.
9. Evaluate the printed photograph and decide if your color adjustment is satisfactory. If there are no visibly unusual colorcasts, then you have successfully adjusted the color of your printed photo. If you are not happy with the printed photo's color, reopen the adjustment layer by double clicking on it and try again.
Tags: color adjustment, Color Balance, highlight areas, your photo, color corrected, color corrected image