A quick and easy photo-editing tutorial

If you are new to the world of SLR photography, or you use a point-and-shoot camera, you most likely shoot in JPEG format (rather than RAW). Here's a quick and easy way to color correct your indoor pictures....

(Let me preface by saying that I always shoot in RAW, but if I am editing a JPEG for some reason, this is the route I take)

Ok, so every photographer out there is familiar with the dreaded "orange toned indoor pictures". It's icky, over saturated and makes ALL your indoor pictures look the same. It's something I deal with quite often (as do most photographers). It's ok to get these results as it is usually a quick fix in Photoshop. So here's how I fix a JPEG image in photoshop. There are plenty of other ways to go about color correcting, but this is one of the most simple ways!

*Please note that this is NOT always the fix. This can be hit or miss and may not work on every image with an overly orange tone. It usually works, but sometimes you may need to take a different approach. Use your best judgement and adjust any settings below to your liking.

Here we go!

You start out with an overly warm image like this one. Nice picture, good enough to save, but the colors are a bit too warm.

Instead of taking the easy way out and converting to B/W, I try this route....

Go to your LAYERS window and right click the "BACKGROUND" layer. Select duplicate layer.

There are now 2 layers. Background and Background copy. Make sure that Background copy is selected and move on to the next step.

In your top bar, select Image--Auto Color.

Now you are given an OVERLY greenish image that is slightly darker. Almost zombieish *EEK!*

Again you will click Image and now Adjustments--Brightness/Contrast.

Now if your image was VERY bright to begin with, this might not be necessary, but I adjust the brightness to my liking. Not over-exposing it, but just giving it that extra pop it needs (You can ignore the green tint to your picture right now).

Now return to your Layers window and select the top layer (the greenish one) and move the opacity around. I took mine down to 37%. You might need 50%, 75% or 10%. This part is where you play. We are basically allowing the photo to have a healthy mix of green/blue and orange/yellow. When we turn down the opacity to the top layer, we are allowing the bottom layer to shine through. The lower the opacity, the more the background image will show!

Now we have a more realisticly toned image. Not too green, not to warm. Now that that part is done, you can have fun editing! Color correcting your images first is the key to perfectly edited pictures!

Happy editing everyone!