Regardless of the tremendous advancement in digital camera technology, there are a few things that your cameras won’t give you. A perfect color is something even a professional photographer will not get every time. Digital cameras often stealthily pass on some kind of color cast, for example, a greenish or bluish hue onto photographs. Fortunately, digital photo editing software offers a means to correct it.
What is Color Correction?
Broadly speaking, color correction is an image editing technique that is used to adjust the colors in an image in order to bring about a change in its hue. In addition to fixing problems, color correction can also be used to add a bit of a color tint or change the color tint of a picture. Color adjustments can also be used creatively to completely change the composition of a photograph. Color correction is often the last step in image editing.
Talking about color correction also brings in to picture another term – color temperature. If you have clicked pictures under different lighting conditions, you would have noticed how the resulting photographs show a distinguishable color cast depending on the source of lighting (example: warm yellowish-orange from tungsten or bluish-white from fluorescent). Color temperature measures the different colors in a picture and color correction involves filtration and other techniques that are applied to bring the desired result.
When is Color Correction Necessary?
Color correction is primarily used to:
1. Lend attention to specific elements in a photograph, for instance, the blue color in an image of red balloons against a blue and white sky.
2. Repair photographs that are too dark or too light, or have improper color composition.
3. Adjust or even out the color and contrast of all pictures in a set of shots, so that all images share the same feel of location and timing.
4. Add creative enhancements to bring about a style factor in a photograph, for instance, a portfolio or profile image.
If you are planning to do color correction on your own, keep it mind that you must have the right tools at hand. A photo editing professional can do an expert color correction job for you, and turn that otherwise ordinary picture into something fantastic.
