Overcoming Color Problems Inherent in Some Cameras

Some cameras (okay, a lot of cameras) put their own color signature on your photos. Some cameras produce every shot with a slight red color bias, some have a slight cyan color bias, some have a different color balance, and if your camera does any of these, you can compensate for that in Lightroom's Camera Calibration panel.

Step One

There are two parts to the Camera Calibration panel (shown here). The first (topmost) slider controls any tint in the shadow areas of your image, and this may be enough to calibrate the image for your camera if your tint problems appear in just the shadow areas. If your problems appear in other areas, then you'll have to go on to the next set of calibration sliders.

©SCOTT KELBY

Step Two

There are three sets of sliders (for the Red, Green, and Blue Primaries). The top slider in each color controls the hue, and the slider below each controls the amount of saturation. In this example, the camera gives each photo a bit of a cyan cast, so in the close-up of the Camera Calibration panel shown here, we're dragging the Blue Primary Hue slider away from cyan, and to reduce the overall saturation of cyan, we're dragging the Blue Primary Saturation slider to the left just a little bit. At this point in the Beta development cycle of Lightroom, you can't save these settings for your particular camera and apply them with one click, but it appears as though that's Adobe's intent in a future release.