Photoshop® CS4 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 1. Enhancing Images with Adjustments

In This Chapter

• Selecting automatic color correction

• Using simple manual color correction tools

• Introducing professional correction tools

• Switching colors with mappers and other tools

Photoshop can provide magical transformations to images, making them unrecognizable from the original. But sometimes what you really want is simply to make an image look the same as the original — only better. Perhaps the colors are a little too warm, or the shadows a bit inky, but you don't want an image that looks more processed than a freeze-dried floral arrangement. You'd be happy to have everyone admire your image without a clue that you've made major corrections in Photoshop.

Welcome to the world of image enhancements. This chapter concentrates on the things you can do to correct color, contrast, hue, and color saturation. After you master the basic tools, you can explore some even more sophisticated things that you can do by using features such as Photoshop's Adjustment Layers (in Book V, Chapter 1), which let you dynamically apply your changes in remarkably flexible ways. But before you dive into image adjustments, make sure you remove any flaws, such as dust, scratches, blemishes, and other nasty items, from your image. Check out Book VIII, Chapter 3 to find out about fixing imperfections.

Introducing the Histogram Panel

One of the first things you want to ...