Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 Studio Techniques

Balancing Your Colors

To eliminate any color casts that are in your image, you'll need to look for color contamination in the gray areas of your image, and then use that information to help correct the whole image. Three standard areas of your image will usually contain a shade of gray: the brightest area of the image, which is known as the highlight; the darkest area of the image, which is known as the shadow (on most photos, the highlight and shadow areas shouldn't contain color); and a gray object in the image.

Now that we know which areas need to be adjusted, let's go ahead and make the actual adjustment. Start by choosing Image > Adjustments > Curves. We'll be working with all three eyedroppers that show up in the lower right. All three ...