Chapter 16: Adjusting Tonality and Color

Overview

Almost every photograph that finds its way onto your computer ”whether it is scanned, copied from a Photo CD, transferred from a digital camera, or downloaded from the Web ”will need some color adjustment, from minor tweaking to major surgery. Inferior photographic techniques, such as bad lighting, poor focus, and under- or overexposure , are a major cause of color problems in images; however, other variables can significantly degrade color and tonality. The type and quality of the equipment that is used to digitize the image is a factor ”an expensive film scanner with a high dynamic range can see many more variations of tone than an inexpensive digital camera.

Inevitably, you will use Photoshop s color adjustment features to enhance contrast and remove color casts in order to compensate for the multitude of variables that can occur during input.

In this chapter, you will learn about:

• Measuring tonality and color

• Making quick adjustments

• Working with levels and curves

• Adjusting Shadow and highlights

• Balancing color and mixing channels

• Using Adjustment layers

• Working with color enhancement filters