Color Correcting in CS4

James our T.A. taught me and others a way of color correcting that helps in getting your photo to the perfect color balance so I thought I would type it up and share it with the whole class. Hope these instructions make sense, and if not comment and I will be sure to explain further!! Hope this helps in your color balancing techniques!!

Color Correcting-

-Make a copy of your original picture and create a new layer
-Go to edit, then fill, and make sure Use is 50% gray (shortcut to get here is F5)
-Make sure blending is normal and opacity is 100, than click ok
-Double click your background copy to get to layer styles
-Go to blend mode and pick difference then hit ok
-Go to the half moon icon (the circle that is half black and half white) and click threshold
-On the threshold slide icon to the left and then start moving back to the right until gray starts to appear. Hit shift and click to make your point on the gray area.
-Throw layers away
-Click the half moon icon again and go to threshold to move your icon again. To the left is your black point; to the right is your white point. Shift and click to make your points.
-Throw the layer away
-Go back to half moon icon and go to curves. There you have the three eyedroppers and you click your black, white and gray points. Do your black and white first, then the gray.
-Hit shift, and option to click on the points to cut them out of your picture.

* This works best if your photo is in RAW format. If your photo is already color balanced fairly well, this won’t change it very much. And sometimes this may only get you to a good starting position in order to add contrast or minor color corrections.

Good luck on the upcoming project!!!! :)