Getting Neutral Tones Where You Need Them
A friend of mine is a pilot and was frustrated by photographing clouds. He could never get the color right.
I gave him some ideas, something he might try for color in clouds, and thought my readers would be interested in this, too. While he was talking about clouds, the techniques here work for any situation where color is off. I will give this for Photoshop and Lightroom/Camera Raw. The key to doing this is to understand that you are using a control that works to make neutral tones neutral, i.e., whites, grays and blacks without color casts. You do need to have an idea of where the neutral tones are in a photo (parts of clouds are typically neutral, to use my friend’s example), but this does not have to be precise. You simply click on whatever you think should be neutral and keep clicking new spots until the photo looks good. If some of your clicks look bad, so what? Just click somewhere else. Here are the steps:
Photoshop and Photoshop Elements:
1. Open a Levels adjustment layer over your photo.
2. Click on the middle eyedropper of the three eyedroppers in Levels in order to select it.
3. Move your cursor onto the photo (the cursor will look like an eyedropper).
4. Click with the bottom of the eyedropper on parts of the photo that should be neutral (the middle eyedropper is for taking color casts out of neutral tones — you can click on white, gray or black sorts of tones).
5. Keep clicking until you are close, but a little over-adjusted.
6. Use Layer Opacity to control how strong the layer is applied.
Lightroom and Camera Raw:
1. Click on the White Balance eyedropper (in the toolbar at top with Camera Raw, in Basic in Develop in Lightroom).
2. Uncheck auto dismiss (in toolbar in Lightroom below photo)
3. Move your cursor onto the photo — it will be an eyedropper.
4. Click with the bottom of the eyedropper on parts of the photo that should be neutral (the WB eyedropper is for taking color casts out of neutral tones such as white, gray and black).
5. Keep clicking until you get what you want.
6. Tweak adjustment if needed with Temperature and Tint adjustment sliders.
