How to perfect your pictures

By John Woram, CNET.com on 18 October 2004

Tags: step | layer | background

Step 1: Getting started
Step 2: What you'll need
Step 3: Amputate alien extremities
Step 4: Remove unwanted people 		Step 5: Correct the colour cast
Step 6: Build better backgrounds
Step 7: Downsize your images


Step 5: Correct the colour cast
If you've just come back from the great outdoors only to discover your images have a bluish tinge, chances are you took some indoor shots earlier and forgot to change the camera to daylight exposure when you went outside. To chase those blues away, try your luck with Enhance > Auto Color Correction. It often does an excellent job all by itself, but if not, undo the correction by pressing Ctrl+Z, then scroll down to Adjust Color and select the Color Cast option. A Color Cast Correction dialog box appears, and the cursor becomes an eyedropper. Just click the eyedropper over an area that's supposed to be a neutral shade (white, gray, or black). Do a bit of experimenting, and if things don't work out, just press the Reset button and try again.


After a bit of colour correction, the girl's skin tone takes on a healthier hue, the bricks are redder, and the window frames look whiter.

Tip
For more fine-tuning, try the Color Variations option within the Adjust Color submenu.

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