PICshopy: Color Manipulation in photoshop

Color Manipulation

Oh, yes. Dr. Ashley felt that color has a great deal to
do with the well-being of the emotionally disturbed.
—Nurse Diesel, in the ﬁlm High Anxiety (1978)

Color Manipulation

Look at this chapter as a box chock-full of color-
manipulation tools and methods. Photoshop provides an
abundance of ways to shift the colors in an image. Which
tools and methods you use depends on the type of original
image you have and what kind of results you want. We’ll
start with a few popular options and progress into lesser-
known techniques that might be useful from time to time.
Before we get to the fun stuff, you ﬁrst need some basic
knowledge about color, because that’s essential to under-
standing what’s going on behind the scenes with Photo-
shop’s color-manipulation tools.

At the Core Is the Color Wheel

The vast majority of Photoshop’s color controls are based
on a classic color wheel (Figure 8.1). If you understand a
few basic concepts about the color wheel, you’ll be ahead
of the game when controlling color in Photoshop.
Every color you’ve ever seen in Photoshop can be
described as a combination of hue, saturation, and brightness
(HSB for short). Let’s look at what these terms mean.

Hue = Basic Color

Figure 8.1 Most of Photoshop’s color-
adjustment features are based on the
color wheel.

In Figure 8.1, only six basic colors are shown: cyan, blue,
magenta, red, yellow, and green. Every color you could
imagine is based on one of those colors or the transition

between them. Take red, for example. Darken it and you
get maroon; make it less vivid and you have pink. But both
maroon and pink are versions of red.

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Photoshop describes these basic colors—hues—using
numbers that indicate how many degrees the color is
from red, going clockwise around a color wheel. If you
divide the color wheel into sixths and start with red at 0,
the other colors are located on the wheel as follows: yel-
low at 60°, green at 120°, cyan at 180°, blue at 240°, and
magenta at 300° (Figure 8.2). You don’t have to remember
any of those numbers, but it will be helpful to know that
hue numbers in Photoshop are based on the color wheel.

When you adjust the hue (using an adjustment such as
Hue/Saturation), you’re effectively spinning the color
wheel by moving each basic color in the image an equal
amount (or angle) around the edge of the color wheel.

Figure 8.2 If you divide the color
wheel into six equal parts, you’ll find
the primary colors that make up an
image.

The other way to shift the basic colors in an image is to
push them toward one of the six primary colors in the
color wheel (using an adjustment such as Color Balance).
Red, green, and blue are the exact opposites of cyan,
magenta, and yellow, respectively. Cyan ink’s sole job in life
is to absorb red light, magenta ink absorbs green light, and
yellow ink absorbs blue light. That’s why you’ll never ﬁnd
an adjustment that allows you to shift something toward
cyan and red at the same time. They’re opposites, so mov-
ing toward red automatically moves away from cyan. When
you push an image toward one of the primary colors, all
the colors within the image shift in that direction and
become more similar, whereas shifting the hue by spinning
the color wheel leaves colors as different as they used to
be, while moving each color an equal distance around the
color wheel.

Saturation = Amount of Color
If you move from the outer ring of a color wheel toward
the center, the colors mellow out and become much less
colorful. In fact, the shades in the absolute center of the
color wheel contain no color at all (they’re gray). Photo-
shop describes how colorful something is by using percent-
ages, and calls this property saturation. If something has
no saturation at all (0%), then it has no color at all (that
is, no hint of any of the basic colors that show up around
the outer edge of the color wheel), and therefore contains

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only shades of gray. On the other hand, if something has
100% saturated colors, it will be as colorful as possible, just
like the colors that appear on the outer rim of the color
wheel.
The color adjustments you make shift the colors in an
image based on the color wheel. Most of what you do will
result in moving a color around the wheel to change its
hue, or shifting it toward another color by pushing it to the
opposite side of the wheel.

Brightness/Lightness/Luminosity
Missing from our color wheel are the different brightness
levels for all those colors. You could create a 3D color wheel
in the shape of a cylinder, with dark colors at its base and

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Figure 8.3 A three-dimensional color
wheel would have dark colors at the
bottom and bright colors at the top.

Figure 8.4 Hue/Saturation controls in
the Adjustments panel.

the brightest colors at the top (Figure 8.3). But because
we’ll probably never see anything that fancy in Photoshop,
we’ll just describe the brightness of a color using one of
three words: brightness, lightness, or luminosity. Each of those
words is just a slightly different way to describe how bright
a color is. Adobe can never seem to decide which term to
use, but all three terms basically mean the same thing.
Now that you have a general idea of how to think about
color, jump in and see how you can mess with the colors in
your images.

Hue/Saturation Changes

To get started, click the Adjustment Layer icon at the bot-
tom of the Layers panel (the icon looks like a circle, half
of which is ﬁlled with black) and choose Hue/Saturation
from the pop-up menu. That action creates an adjustment
layer and displays the Hue/Saturation controls in the
Adjustments panel (Figure 8.4). You can make three types
of changes with this type of adjustment—changes to hue,
saturation, and lightness.
At the bottom of the Adjustments panel are two color
strips, displaying all the possible hues you can use in Photo-
shop. Those color strips are really just a standard color
wheel that’s been straightened out. Notice that the color

III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

on the far left of each strip is the same as the one on the
far right; if you bent the strip into a circle, it would make
a color wheel. The Hue slider allows you to change the
basic colors that make up the image. Go ahead and open
any colorful image; then move the Hue slider around to
see what happens (Figures 8.5 to 8.7). The bottom color
strip indicates what you’ve done to each of the hues. Pick
a color on the top strip and look straight down to the
lower strip to see what Photoshop has done to it as you’ve
adjusted the Hue slider. For now, just remember that hue
means basic color, and that the Hue slider changes the basic
color of everything in the image.

Figure 8.5 The original image. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 8.6 Moving the Hue slider
shifts all the hues in the image.

Figure 8.7 The result of applying the
adjustment shown in Figure 8.6.

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Later you’ll learn how to get much more control over the
speciﬁc colors in the image, but ﬁrst let’s look at the other
types of changes you can make with the Hue/Saturation
adjustments.
Using the same image, move the Saturation slider all the
way to the left to make the image completely black-and-
white. Then move the slider all the way to the right; all the
colors become ridiculously vivid (Figure 8.8). Most images
can use a modest saturation boost.

Figure 8.8 This left side of this image
shows the original photo, and the
right shows what can happen when
you move the Saturation slider all the
way to the right.

Now try the Lightness slider—slide all the way to the left
and then all the way to the right to see what happens to the
image. You should end up with a solid black image at one
extreme and a solid white image at the other. That sort of
generic adjustment can easily mess up an image (especially
when applied to the entire image), so you need to be care-
ful when adjusting Lightness. This slider becomes much
more useful once you isolate a range of color to adjust.
Let’s consider that option next.

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Isolating a Range of Colors
When the Edit pop-up menu at the top of the Hue/Satu-
ration controls on the Adjustments panel is set to Master,
any change you make will affect all the colors in the image
(Figure 8.9). If you’d rather have your changes affect only
certain colors, choose a color from that pop-up menu
before adjusting the image. Watch what happens to those
two color strips at the bottom of the panel as you switch
between the choices that are available from the Edit pop-
up menu. The tiny sliders that show up indicate the range
of colors that you’ll be changing. The change will apply to
the hues between the two vertical bars and then fade out
near the hues that appear above the triangular sliders.
The Edit pop-up menu lists only six generic colors. What
if the color you need to isolate is between two of those

colors? To get around that six-color limitation, all you have
to do is select the eyedropper, move your mouse over the

Figure 8.9 Choose Master or a color
family from the Edit pop-up menu.

image, and click the color you want to change. If you’ve
changed the pop-up menu setting to a color other than
Master, the sliders will center on the color you clicked,
which puts them in the right position to work with that
color. Go ahead and try it now: Create a Hue/Saturation
adjustment layer (by selecting Hue/Saturation from the
Adjustments panel), choose a color from the Edit pop-up
menu, click the eyedropper, and then click a color in the
image before moving any of the sliders.
If you really want to get precise control over the range
of colors you’re attempting to alter, you’ll need to adjust
those tiny sliders that appeared after you chose a color
from the Edit pop-up menu. It might be good to start by
smashing them together into one mass, which forces Pho-
toshop to work on the narrowest range of colors possible.
So go ahead and do that. To make sure that Photoshop is
focusing on the right color, click the eyedropper and then
click the color within the image that you want to change.
(Remember that this action centers the sliders on the color
you clicked.) At this point, you probably can’t tell if Photo-
shop is going to change a wide enough range of colors, so
move the Saturation slider all the way to the left just to see

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what changes in the image. That action will make parts of
the image become black-and-white (Figure 8.10).
If Photoshop isn’t working on a wide enough range of
colors, hold down the Shift key and click additional areas
of the image (or click and drag across an area to get all the
colors in an object). Shift-clicking spreads out the vertical
sliders, causing Photoshop to work on a wider range of
colors. If you accidentally click a color that you don’t want

Figure 8.10 Clicking in the image
and lowering the Saturation setting
will turn areas black-and-white. In this
image, the lower-left corner is the
place to select. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 8.11 Shift-click additional
colors until all the colors you want to
adjust become black-and-white.

Figure 8.12 Once you’ve isolated the
range you want to change, move all
three adjustment sliders to get to the
desired color.

to shift, hold down Option/Alt and click that area again to
remove it from the range of colors that are being adjusted
(narrowing the gap between the two vertical sliders). With
the Saturation slider all the way to the left, all the areas
you want to shift will show up as black-and-white (Figure
8.11). Now move the Saturation slider back to the middle
and mess with all three main sliders (Hue, Saturation,
and Lightness) until you get the change you want (Figure
8.12). Remember that the eyedropper is not selected by
default when the color is changed.
The eyedropper tools also control where the sliders appear.
By default, the leftmost eyedropper will be active as long
as the Edit pop-up menu is set to a color, not to Master.
When you click in the image with that tool selected, you
center the sliders on the color you clicked. If you click the
center eyedropper (the one with the plus sign) and then
click in the image, Photoshop spreads out the vertical bar
sliders to include the colors you clicked across, just like
when you held down the Shift key. The eyedropper with
the minus sign narrows the width between the vertical slid-
ers, therefore narrowing the range of colors that are being
affected—just like when Option/Alt-clicking. You can use
the icons, the keyboard commands, or a combination of
the two techniques.
If the area you’re trying to change is in motion or out of
focus, or it blends into the surrounding colors (Figure
8.13), you’ll need to deal with the transition between that

area and its surroundings. To make the adjustment fade
into the surrounding colors, move one or both of the
triangular sliders away from the vertical bars and watch the
image until the change smoothly blends into what’s around
the area you were attempting to adjust (Figure 8.14).

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Figure 8.13 You have to be careful when working with colors
that blend in with their surroundings. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 8.14 Moving the outer slider toward the color you
need to blend into will fade the adjustment into those colors.

Now it’s time to get to work and ﬁgure out speciﬁc uses for
the Hue/Saturation options.

Saturating Colors
Many images that come from a digital camera or ﬂatbed
scanner can beneﬁt from a boost in saturation (Figure
8.15). For a general boost of color, make a Hue/Saturation
adjustment layer and ratchet up the Saturation slider until
the colors in the image start to pop (Figure 8.16). When
you do that, you’ll probably notice that some colors become
too vivid before others have reached their true potential. To
avoid oversaturating, choose the objectionable color from
the Edit pop-up menu, select the eyedropper tool, click the
color within the image to center the color isolation slid-
ers, and then move the Saturation slider toward the left to
mellow out the oversaturated color (Figure 8.17).

Figure 8.15 This image could use a
saturation boost. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 8.16 After saturating the image,
the yellow areas are just too colorful. Figure 8.17 After we’ve isolated the yellows and
lowered their saturation, none of the colors over-
powers the others.

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Enhancing Skies
If you’ve looked at a lot of photographs containing blue
skies, you might have noticed that many of those skies are
actually closer to a light shade of cyan than a shade of true
blue (Figure 8.18). If you like the skies to look as genuinely
blue as possible, start by creating a Hue/Saturation adjust-
ment layer and choose Blues from the Edit pop-up menu.
Select the eyedropper tool and click somewhere within
the sky in the image to center the sliders. Then make the
following adjustment: Move the Lightness slider toward the
left to darken the sky, move the Saturation slider toward
the right to make the sky more colorful, and experiment
with the Hue slider until you get the best shade of blue
(Figures 8.19 and 8.20).

Figure 8.18 This cyan-ish sky could
use a tweak. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 8.19 Hue/Saturation
adjustment.

Figure 8.20 After adjusting the
image with Hue/Saturation, the sky

is true blue.
The only problem with this technique is that you might
run into an image containing blue areas that are not part
of the sky (Figures 8.21 and 8.22). If you don’t want to
shift those areas, you’ll have to make changes after you’re
done creating the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Each
adjustment layer contains a white rectangle just to the right
of the adjustment layer icon for that layer. That rectangle is
a layer mask, and it can be used to further limit the areas to
which the adjustment will apply. All you have to do is grab

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the Paintbrush tool and paint with black at full opacity, and
you’ll prevent the adjustment from applying to the areas
you painted. As long as the Hue/Saturation adjustment
layer is active in the Layers panel, the paint you apply will
affect where the adjustment applies. Painting with black
hides the adjustment; painting with white brings it back.
So, after enhancing a sky, you might want to grab a large,
soft-edged brush and paint with black over any areas that
you want to preserve (Figure 8.23).

Figure 8.21 The original image. (©2008 Dan Ablan.) Figure 8.22 After adjusting the sky, areas of the foreground
have shifted colors.

Figure 8.23 Painting with black on
the layer mask of the adjustment layer
prevents the adjustment from apply-
ing to the buildings.

Editing Hue/Saturation Adjustments
If you ever need to edit a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer
that you created earlier, be extra careful. You can double-
click the adjustment layer icon on the left side of the adjust-
ment layer to change the adjustment. But before you start
to make changes, you’ll need to choose the same color you

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originally chose from the Edit pop-up menu; otherwise, any
changes you make will affect the entire image because the
Edit pop-up menu will be set to Master. If you can’t remem-
ber which color you chose previously, glance at the color
strips to see if you can ﬁgure out which areas in the bottom
strip differ from the top one (Figure 8.24). Then look at
the top strip directly above that area to ﬁgure out which
color to choose from the Edit pop-up menu. Once you
choose the proper color from that pop-up menu, Photo-
shop will get you back to adjusting the speciﬁc color you
isolated when you originally created the adjustment layer.
Moving the Saturation slider too far to the right can end

Figure 8.24 When returning to an
adjustment layer, look at the color
bars and try to figure out which color
you adjusted previously (yellow, in
this case).

Alternatively, you could set a color
sample on the saturated color, set
that to HSB in the Info panel, and
watch those numbers while adjust-
ing the saturation.

up distorting the relationship between the colors in an
image. As one color reaches its maximum saturation, it
simply can’t become more saturated, but the other colors
in the image will continue to become more vivid as you
move the Saturation slider farther toward the right. To
ﬁgure out the maximum saturation boost to give an image
without distorting the relationship between the colors, pay
attention to what happens in the Info panel. Choose Win-
dow > Info, click the eyedropper icon in the Info panel,
and choose HSB. Then, when you’re increasing the satura-
tion of the image, move your cursor over the most satu-
rated areas of the image, and stop increasing the saturation
once you see that the “S” (Saturation) number in the HSB
part of the Info panel reaches 100%. If you go any further,

you’ll distort the relationship between colors in the image.

Color/Grayscale Conversions

The best way to convert a color image to a grayscale image
(traditionally known as a “black-and-white” image) is to
use the Black and White adjustment (Image > Adjustments
> Black and White). As you spend more time with Photo-
shop, you’ll come across many methods for black-and-white
conversion. But the Black and White adjustment is such a
powerful tool, and so easy to use, that you can accomplish
most black-and-white tasks with this tool. Best of all, the
Black and White adjustment can be applied as an adjust-
ment layer, so you get all of the advantages of adjustment
layers for your grayscale conversions.

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The options in the Black and White dialog let you specify
exactly how you want particular color ranges in an image to
be converted to grayscale (Figure 8.25). The sliders are very
easy to use. If you move the Yellows slider to the right, for
example, the yellow tones in the image will be represented
by lighter shades of gray; move the slider to the left, and
the yellows will darken. The other sliders work in much the
same way for the other primary colors (Figure 8.26).

The Black and White dialog is actually pretty smart. If you
increase the Reds setting, only those tones in the image
that are truly red increase (Figure 8.27).

Figure 8.25 Photoshop’s Black and
White conversion dialog.

Figure 8.26 As you move the sliders in the Black and White
dialog, the corresponding colors in the grayscale image

Figure 8.27 Only the reds are affected by this change in the
Black and White dialog settings.

become lighter or darker. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Also note that the sliders aren’t interrelated. If you want to
increase blue, you don’t need to decrease yellow, too. The
control is smart enough to know which pixels need to be
affected by a particular edit.
With the Black and White adjustment, you don’t have to
worry about the total percentage values of the image. If the
totals add up to more than 100%, you won’t see a change
in overall exposure in the image. However, if the total
percentage value of all the sliders is greater than 100, the
image will end up with a brighter exposure than when you
started. A total value lower than 100 will result in a darker
image.

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The Auto button performs an automatic conversion and is
well worth using to experiment. The Auto algorithm does
a very good job of mapping different colors to different
tones to produce a nice contrasty image.
The Black and White dialog also includes tinting controls,
so you can perform black-and-white conversion and color
toning in one step (Figure 8.28). Turn on the Tint check
box to activate the tint controls; then select the hue that
you want to use for tinting, and adjust the Saturation slider
to specify the strength of the tint.

Figure 8.28 The tint controls in the
Black and White adjustment let you
perform grayscale conversion and
tinting in one step.

The Black and White dialog is equipped with several preset
conﬁgurations (Figure 8.29). In addition, you can save
your own presets by using the Save and Load pop-up menu
located to the right of the Preset menu.

Colorizing Grayscale Photos
If you enjoy the look of hand-tinted photographs but don’t
want to deal with the chemicals and mess that are usually
involved, you might get excited about colorizing images
with a mouse.

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Figure 8.29 The Black and White
dialog offers a variety of preset
configurations.

There are many ways to colorize a black-and-white image.
For example, you can use a Hue/Saturation adjustment

III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

layer to add color to the image. Try starting out with this
technique because it gives you lots of ﬂexibility to tweak
later. All you have to do is choose Image > Mode > RGB,
use the color eyedropper to select one of the areas where
you’d like to add color, and then create a Hue/Saturation
adjustment layer. Turn on the Colorize check box, which
should shift the selected area to a color similar to that
of your foreground color (Figure 8.30). When the color
has been applied, adjust the Hue setting to cycle through
the full spectrum of colors. Once you’ve chosen the basic
color, adjust the Saturation setting to control how vivid the
color is, and change the Lightness setting to determine
how dark the area should be (Figure 8.31).

Figure 8.30 When you first turn on
the Colorize check box, the color you
get is based on your foreground color.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 8.31 Fine-tune the color by
adjusting the Hue, Saturation, and
Lightness sliders.

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With this select-and-adjust approach, you use the adjust-
ment layer to mask out areas of color (Figure 8.32), and
then you reﬁne the result by painting on the adjustment
layer’s mask with a black brush. If you remove too much of
the colorization, just paint with white. Painting with white
causes the adjustment to apply to a larger area of the image,
whereas black limits which areas are adjusted. If the color is
too intense, simply paint with a shade of gray on the adjust-
ment layer, which causes the adjustment to apply in dif-
fering amounts. The darker the shade of gray, the less the
adjustment will apply. Another option is to double-click the
thumbnail icon for the adjustment layer (to the left of the
layer name) to modify the settings that are being applied.

Figure 8.32 By using the Adjustments
panel, you can instantly create an
adjustment layer to mask out areas
of color.

With this type of adjustment, usually there will be too
much color in the darkest and brightest areas of the image.
To limit the amount of color applied to these areas, choose
Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options while the adjust-
ment layer is active (Figure 8.33). Pull in the lower-left
slider in the Blend If area until all the color is disappear-
ing from the darkest areas of the image. You don’t want
to remove the color completely, so hold down Option/
Alt and drag the left edge of the slider that you just moved
until you get a smooth transition in the shadow areas of the

Figure 8.33 Use the Blending Options
to balance areas with too much color.

image. Before you click OK, move the right slider a short
distance and then Option/Alt-drag its right edge until the

color blends into the brightest parts of the image. With
a little experimentation, you’ll be able to ﬁnd the setting
that looks best for the image (Figures 8.34 and 8.35).

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Figure 8.34 The color of the backdrop
could be a little less saturated.

Figure 8.35 After reducing the
amount of color in the shadow areas,

the image looks better.

Replacing Color

If you like the general ideas discussed so far, but didn’t
have complete success isolating areas based on hues, try
choosing Image > Adjustments > Replace Color (Figure
8.36). In essence, Replace Color combines the Color
Range command with the color-shifting capability found
in the Hue/Saturation controls. The advantage of using
Replace Color is that instead of having to ﬁgure out the
exact Hue, Saturation, and Lightness settings necessary to
get the desired result, you just deﬁne the desired color by
clicking the color swatch at lower right in the dialog.

Figure 8.36 The Replace Color dialog
is a combination of the Color Range
command and the Hue/Saturation
controls in the Adjustments panel.
Here, the green leaves are selected,
and the hue is adjusted to make them
purple. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

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Unfortunately, Replace Color is not available as an adjust-
ment layer, so you might not want to use it often. You
might prefer to use the Color Range command (Select >
Color Range) and then create a Hue/Saturation adjust-
ment layer, which gives you much more ﬂexibility if you
ever need to ﬁne-tune the initial adjustment. Another
option is to duplicate a layer, apply Replace Color, and
create a layer mask for added blending control.
Both Hue/Saturation and Replace Color effectively rotate
the color wheel to shift the colors in an image. Now let’s
take a look at how we can shift the general color of an
image toward one of the primary colors (red, yellow,
green, cyan, blue, magenta).

Variations

If you like simple and easy features, you’ll enjoy using the
Variations command (Image > Adjustments > Variations).
The Variations dialog displays your original image in the
middle of a seven-image cluster (Figure 8.37). When you
click one of the surrounding images, Variations replaces

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Figure 8.37 The Variations dialog
presents simple previews of multiple
adjustments.

Figure 8.38 After you click one of
the choices, the surrounding views
repopulate with new choices.

the one in the middle and repopulates the surrounding
views with new alternatives (Figure 8.38). To control how
different the alternatives are from the center image, adjust
the Fine/Coarse slider at upper right in the dialog.
This type of adjustment concentrates on either the bright-
est areas of the image (highlights), the middle brightness
levels (midtones), or the dark areas of the image (shad-
ows). You can adjust all three areas with one adjustment,
but you’ll have to choose them one at a time and make
an adjustment before clicking OK. After you’ve made a
change to the image, you’ll be able to compare the original
to your current selection by comparing the two images that
appear at upper left in the dialog.
Variations can change the brightness and saturation of
the image. However, Levels and Curves are far superior
for adjusting brightness, and Hue/Saturation gives you
much more control over which colors become saturated.
But the techniques discussed here provide a quick way to
adjust color.

III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

If you notice intense colors in areas where they don’t
belong (Figure 8.39), Photoshop most likely is warning you
that you might be losing detail in that area. If you’d rather
not see those unusual colors, turn off the Show Clipping
option at upper right in the dialog.
Use Variations for very basic chores where you might pre-
fer a simple visual interface; for example, when you want
to tint a grayscale photo. All you have to do is change the
mode of the image to RGB (Image > Mode > RGB), go to
Variations (Image > Adjustments > Variations), and click
away until you get the color tint you want (Figure 8.40).

Figure 8.39 If colors look out of place,

it’s usually an indication that clipping
has occurred, which is a sign that you
might be losing detail in those areas.

Figure 8.40 Adding color to a gray-
scale image is easy with Variations.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Color Balance

Most of the time, you might pass over Variations in favor
of the Color Balance controls in the Adjustments panel
(Figure 8.41), which make future changes much easier. Just
as in Variations, the Color Balance controls allow you to

shift the color of highlights, midtones, or shadows toward
one of the primary colors; the only difference is that you’ll
have to look at the main screen to get a preview. Moving a

Figure 8.41 The Color Balance panel
is a good alternative to the Variations
dialog.

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slider to +15 or –15 is approximately the same as making
one click in the Variations dialog with the default setting
on the Fine/Coarse slider. But because you’re not forced
to make adjustments in preset increments, it’s much easier
to be precise with Color Balance than with Variations.
Both Variations and Color Balance effectively shift the
colors of the image toward one side of the color wheel. It’s
almost as if you start at the center of the color wheel and
then shift toward one of the primary colors (Figure 8.42).

Figure 8.42 Color Balance pushes the
colors in the image toward one of the
primary colors.

Figure 8.43 Move the curve up or down to push
the colors in the image toward or away from the
color you chose in the Channel pop-up menu.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

All the colors in the image move toward that color, whereas
Hue/Saturation and Replace Color spin the color wheel,
which shifts all the colors in unusual ways (not just toward
one particular color).
A bunch of other commands allow you to shift toward cyan
or red, magenta or green, and yellow or blue in a less obvi-
ous way. Let’s take a look at a few of the adjustments that
allow you to work with those primary colors.

Levels/Curves and Color

Choosing Image > Adjustments > Curves (or selecting
Curves in the Adjustments panel) allows you to pick
between red, green, and blue; or cyan, magenta, and yel-
low (depending on which mode the image uses) in the
Channel pop-up menu (Figure 8.43). When you work on
the Red channel, you’ll be able to shift the overall color of
the image toward either red or cyan by moving the curve
up or down; if you work on the Green channel, you’ll be
able to shift toward green and magenta; and the Blue chan-
nel allows you to shift toward blue and yellow.
Command/Ctrl-click the area of the image where you’d

like to concentrate the adjustment. That action will add a
point to the curve in the speciﬁc location needed to focus
accurately on the area you clicked. Once you’ve done
that, use the up- and down-arrow keys to shift the colors
toward one of the primary colors—which one depends
on the choice you made in the Channel pop-up menu
(Figure 8.44).

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Figure 8.45 Levels can make adjust-
ments similar to those available with

Figure 8.44 Command/Ctrl-click the image to add a point to the curve; then use
the arrow keys to shift the color. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

You can make similar changes by using the Levels com-
mand (Image > Adjustments > Levels). This technique also
allows you to choose from the channels (RGB or CMYK)
that make up the image (Figure 8.45). With an image in
RGB mode, moving any of the upper sliders toward the
left will push the color of the image toward the color you
have chosen from the Channel pop-up menu. Moving the
sliders toward the right will shift the colors toward the
opposite color.

Auto Color Correction
Using Levels or Curves to make color adjustments might
be problematic because the image can change in unex-
pected ways, due to the fact that you’re not just controlling
the highlights/midtones/shadows, as with many other
adjustments. If you’re having trouble getting the overall
look you want, click the Options button in either Levels or
Curves to open the Auto Color Correction Options dialog.
Set the Algorithms setting to Enhance Monochromatic
Contrast to avoid getting rid of color in the highlights or
shadows of the image. Then, to shift the overall color of
the image, turn on the Snap Neutral Midtones check box
and click the color swatch next to Midtones. It should start
with gray, but if you shift that color toward another color,
the general atmosphere of the photo should change as you

Curves.

The Options button appears in
a dialog when you access it via
the Image > Adjustments menu.
However, you need to Alt/Option-
click the Auto button when using
an adjustment layer.

introduce a color cast (Figures 8.46 and 8.47). This tech-
nique is great for changing the overall feeling of a photo

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to make it appear more warm (toward red/orange) or cool
(toward blue/cyan).

Figure 8.46 The original image.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 8.47 Using Auto Color to shift
the image toward warm tones.

Check Save as Defaults in the dialog (Figure 8.48) only
if you plan to shift the overall look of a large number of
photos. Otherwise, when you use Auto Color for color
correction, it will introduce color casts instead of getting
rid of them.

292

Figure 8.48 Don’t check Save as
Defaults unless you want to introduce
a color cast to every image you adjust
with Auto Color.

Auto Color also is handy when you’re combining two
images that differ in general color (Figures 8.49 and
8.50). If one image has a desirable color cast and the

III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

other doesn’t, the two images won’t look like they belong
together (Figure 8.51). You want Photoshop to transfer
the desirable color cast to the second image by analyzing
what’s going on in the brightest and darkest areas of the
image, because a color cast contaminates those areas that
otherwise wouldn’t contain any color. Here’s how to do it.
Place the images side by side so both documents are visible
at the same time. Then, with the image that doesn’t have
a color cast active, choose Image > Adjustments > Curves,
click the Options button, set Algorithms to Find Dark &

Light Colors, and turn off the Snap Neutral Midtones
check box (Figure 8.52).

Figure 8.49 This image has a warm
color cast. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 8.50 This image is more cool (blue) than the one in
Figure 8.49. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 8.51 When the two images are combined, they
don’t look like they belong together.

Now all you have to do is plug in the right colors in the
highlights and shadows. Click the Shadows color swatch to
access the color picker, move your mouse over the image
containing the desirable color cast, and click the darkest
area of the image (Figure 8.53). Next, click the Highlights
color swatch to access the color picker again, and this
time click the brightest area of the image that contains the
desirable color cast (Figure 8.54)—avoiding areas that are

blown out to pure white—and then click OK. That action
should change the color of the active photo so that it will

Figure 8.52 Auto settings for match-
ing two images.

have a color cast similar to that of the other image (Figure
8.55). In this example, the devil girl now looks as if she’s
photographed outside with a ﬁll ﬂash.

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Figure 8.53 Click the Shadows swatch and then click the
darkest part of the image that has the color cast.

Figure 8.54 Click the Highlights swatch and then click the
brightest area of the image.

Figure 8.55 After adjusting the color, the two images have similar color qualities.

Selective Color

Auto Color isn’t the only way to force colors into the
brightest, darkest, and neutral gray areas of an image. If
you choose Image > Adjustments > Selective Color, you can
select which general colors you’d like to change from the
Colors pop-up menu and then shift them toward a primary
color (Figure 8.56). Moving the sliders toward the right
shifts the selected color toward the color listed to the left

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of the slider. Moving the slider toward the left shifts it away
from the color listed and toward its exact opposite. So, even
though this dialog only lists cyan, magenta, yellow, and
black, you can still shift toward red, green, and blue by mov-
ing the sliders toward the left. If the Relative radio button is
selected, you’ll change areas relative to where they started.
If you have 50% cyan and you move the Cyan slider to 10%,
for instance, you’ll end up with 55% cyan, because 10%
of 50% is 5%. On the other hand, if you use the Absolute
setting, you’ll simply add the exact amount that you select.

For example, if you have 50% cyan and you move the Cyan
slider to 10%, you’ll end up with 60% cyan, because Photo-
shop added the exact amount of cyan that you selected.
One nice aspect of Selective Color is the capacity to shift the
color of the blacks in an image. All you have to do is choose
Blacks from the Colors pop-up menu, move the Black slider
toward the left to lighten the area, and then move whichever
color sliders you’d like to use toward the right to push color
into those areas (Figures 8.57 and 8.58). If you’re working
in CMYK mode, moving the Cyan slider toward the right
makes the black areas of the image richer. This adjustment
is commonly used when creating large areas of black in an
image that will be printed on a commercial printing press.
For those areas, 40% cyan is a good setting.

Figure 8.56 With Selective Color, you
can push certain colors toward any of
the primary colors.

Figure 8.57 The original image.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 8.58 Use Selective Color to
shift the color of black areas.

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Selective Color also brightens highlights. Choose Whites
from the Colors menu and then move the Cyan, Magenta,
and Yellow sliders toward the left (Figures 8.59 to 8.61).
This change can be useful for metallic objects, where the
brightest areas need to be pure white in order to make the
object appear to be highly polished and therefore shiny.

Figure 8.59 The original image.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 8.60 After adjusting the whites,
the highlights are much brighter, mak-
ing the object look more polished.

Figure 8.61 The Selective Color
adjustment used to brighten the
highlights.

Match Color

Match Color attempts to match the general color and con-
trast of two images. Let’s start with simple examples and
then progress into more complex and unusual solutions.
Suppose you have two images, one of which has a very cool
feeling and the other of which is rather neutral, but both
images have similar lighting conditions (Figures 8.62 and
8.63). In order to match the general feeling of the two
images, open both images, click the image you’d like to
change, and choose Image > Adjustments > Match Color
(Figure 8.64). At the bottom of the Match Color dialog,
change the Source pop-up menu to show the name of the
image whose color you’d like to match. If the image con-
tains adjustment layers, be sure to choose Merged from the
Layer pop-up menu. That’s all there is to it (Figure 8.65)!

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Figure 8.62 This image has an overall
color that we want to match. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

Figure 8.63 This image needs adjust-
ing. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

After you’ve produced an acceptable match between the
two images, adjust the Image Options settings as needed to
ﬁne-tune the end result. The Luminance slider changes the
brightness of the image; the Color Intensity slider controls
how saturated the colors are. If you don’t want to match the
reference photo precisely, but instead want to head in that
general direction, try increasing the Fade setting. If you set
Fade to 100, you’ll see the original unchanged image (plus
any Luminance and Color Intensity adjustments). Lowering
the Fade setting pushes the image toward the look of the

Figure 8.64 The Match Color dialog.

Figure 8.65 The result of matching
the color between the two images.

reference image. Just move the Fade slider around until you
like the amount of change you’re getting.
On occasion, you might need to adjust a multitude of
images to match a single source image. When that’s the
case, set Source to the name of the image you want to
match; then click the Save Statistics button and name that
preset. Now, at any time in the future, you can click the
Load Statistics button to use the general feeling of that
photo again, and Photoshop won’t need to open the ﬁle.
It’s easy to have a bunch of these ﬁles saved—one for warm,
sunset-like images; another for cool, water-like images; yet
another for high-contrast, less-colorful images; and so on.
Use this technique to get a certain effect without having to
remember which photo you originally matched.
The Match Color dialog is designed to match two photo-
graphs, but it’s also useful on single images. Set Source to
None and then play with the Image Options settings as you
like. You might prefer the Color Intensity setting here ver-
sus the Saturation setting in the Hue/Saturation controls
in the Adjustments panel.

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If an image has an obvious color cast, such as a photo
taken underwater, try turning on the Neutralize check box.
That option will cause the Match Color dialog to attempt
to color-correct the image. The results aren’t always per-
fect, but it’s often a good start for images that have massive
color casts.
Match Color is also good for colorizing grayscale photo-
graphs. Open a full-color reference photo and select an
area (such as a patch of skin that contains both bright
and dark areas) so Photoshop knows what you’d like to
match (Figure 8.66). Then switch to the grayscale photo
and choose Image > Mode > RGB so that the image is in
a mode that can contain color. Now make a very precise
selection of the area where you’d like to add color, and
choose Image > Adjustments > Match Color. To make sure
that Photoshop colors only the selected areas, turn on the
two check boxes at the bottom of the dialog and turn off
the check box at the top. This technique produces a result

Figure 8.66 Make a selection on the
reference photograph to indicate the
color you’d like to match. (©2008 Dan
Ablan.)

that’s superior to what you’d get with other tools because,
instead of applying a generic color across the entire area, it
will usually apply a slightly different color to the bright and
dark areas of an object (Figure 8.67).

Figure 8.67 Convert the grayscale image to RGB mode, make a precise selection, and then match the color.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

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Red Eye Tool

Photoshop’s Red Eye tool (which is grouped with the Heal-
ing Brush and Patch tool) is designed to quickly and easily
remove red eye (Figure 8.68). All you have to do is click
near the eye and Photoshop will search for the closest red
circle, remove all the color, and then darken the area. This
tool is only sensitive to red areas and therefore is not useful
for the green or orange eyes that often result from animals
being photographed using an on-camera ﬂash. (In those
cases, use the Color Replacement tool, which is coming up
next in this chapter.)

Figure 8.68 The Red Eye tool has only two settings
available in the options bar.

The Darken Amount setting determines how dark the
pupil will become (Figure 8.69). If your results look solid
black, choose Edit > Undo, use a lower Darken Amount
setting, and then try again.

Figure 8.69 Left, the original image with red eye. Darken Amount settings from
left to right: 10%, 40%, 80%. (Note: Contrast of these images has been increased
to make the differences more obvious, since the onscreen difference is rather
subtle and might be difficult to see in printed form.)

Low settings for Pupil Size usually produce more detail in
the pupil of the eye, whereas higher settings leave little or
no detail. Settings between 10% and 20% usually produce
an acceptable amount of detail, and settings of 50% or
above produce an almost solid black pupil.

Color Replacement Tool

The Color Replacement tool allows you to paint across
an area and change its color. What’s really nice about this
tool is that you don’t have to be overly precise with your

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painting, because you’re only going to affect the painted
area. Photoshop will replace only the colors that you
mouse over with the crosshair that shows up in the center
of the brush cursor.

This tool applies your foreground
color to the active layer, so
remember that you can change the
foreground color by holding down
the Option/Alt key and clicking an
area in the image that contains the

When you paint, Photoshop uses your foreground color
to change what’s in the active layer, based on the setting
in the Mode pop-up menu in the options bar at the top of
your screen (Figure 8.70):

desired color.

Figure 8.70 The options bar settings determine how the Color Replacement tool
will interact with the image.

 Hue. Changes the basic color of an area without chang-
ing the brightness (Figure 8.71). This option doesn’t
let you change how colorful an area is or introduce
color into an area that didn’t already have it. This
choice is useful when you’d like to change the basic
color of an object in a non-colorful scene, where it
wouldn’t look appropriate to intensify or mellow out
the original colors.
 Saturation. Makes an area as colorful as your fore-
ground color or removes the colors from certain areas
of a photo. This option doesn’t allow you to change the
basic color or brightness of an area. You don’t have to
be very careful when painting, because this feature uses
the same technology as the Background Eraser. To force

Figure 8.71 The dull jacket of the man
crossing the street becomes a shiny
purple color with a few clicks of the
mouse. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

areas to black-and-white, just paint with black, white,
or any shade of gray. Because your foreground color
doesn’t contain any color, the color will be removed
from the area you paint (Figures 8.72 and 8.73).

Figure 8.72 The original image.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 8.73 Color is removed from the
background, using Saturation mode

and painting with black.

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 Color. Changes both the basic color and the saturation
of the color, but not the brightness. In essence, this
option applies the paint color to the brightness of the
original image. This choice is useful when you need
to push a lot of color into a particular area. Just paint
with a relatively vivid version of a new color so the area

becomes as colorful as the original image (Figure 8.74).
 Luminosity. Changes the brightness of an area to match
the brightness of the paint color. This mode won’t allow
you to shift the colors at all. This option might not be
used very often, but it can be helpful if you need to ﬁx
a portion of an image that’s just too intense, such as a
bright red baseball uniform (Figure 8.75).
If you’re having trouble getting good results with this tool,
you need to learn more about the setting that determines
which areas are changed and which are ignored. This tool
uses the same technology as the Background Eraser tool,
which we’ll cover in detail in Chapter 9, “Enhancements
and Masking.” So go check out that chapter and then
come back and try these ideas again.

Channel Mixer

So far, most of the adjustments in this chapter have been
relatively straightforward. You tell Photoshop what you
want to change (midtones, highlights, and so on) and what
direction to shift the colors. But the Channel Mixer is a dif-
ferent beast (Figure 8.76). It forces you to think about how
Photoshop works behind the scenes. The Channel Mixer
lets you literally mix the contents of the channels that show
up in the Channels panel (Window > Channels).
Choose Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer and choose
the desired channel from the Output Channel pop-up
menu. Then move the Source Channels sliders to brighten

Figure 8.74 The top half of the red
bus was painted blue with the mode
set to Color. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 8.75 A few clicks on the bright
red uniform reduce its intensity.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 8.76 The Channel Mixer dialog.

or darken the output channel:
 Because RGB mode creates the image out of red,
green, and blue light, moving sliders toward the right
adds more light and therefore brightens the output
channel based on the contents of the channel whose

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slider you moved. Moving the slider in the opposite
direction reduces the amount of light being applied to
the output channel.
 CMYK mode creates the image out of four colors of
ink, so moving a slider toward the right adds ink to the
output channel, thereby darkening it. Moving a slider
to the left in CMYK mode lessens the amount of ink
in the output channel, effectively brightening it. This
design might sound complicated at ﬁrst, but once you
see a few examples you should start to understand the
simplicity behind it.
Let’s say you have a CMYK mode image of a banana (Figure
8.77) and you’d like to reproduce it using only two colors
of ink. That way you could save money and show your
friends that you’ve really mastered Photoshop. You’d prob-
ably end up using yellow ink for the banana, and then use
some black ink so you can get shadows that are darker than
the yellow ink. Start by choosing Image > Adjustments >
Channel Mixer, choose Cyan from the Output Channel
pop-up menu, and move the Cyan Source Channels slider
all the way to the left to indicate that you don’t want to
use any of what was originally in the Cyan channel (Figure

Figure 8.77 The original banana
image is in CMYK mode. (©2007
Photospin.)

8.78). Then choose Magenta from the Output pop-up
menu and move the Magenta slider all the way to the left to
clear out the Magenta channel (Figure 8.79).

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Figure 8.78 Moving the Cyan slider all the way to the left
removes all cyan from the image.

Figure 8.79 Moving the Magenta slider all the way to the
left removes all magenta from the image.

III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

Now the image should be made out of just yellow and black
ink, but it most likely looks quite light because there’s not
enough black ink to compensate for not using any cyan or
magenta ink. To ﬁx that problem, choose Black from the
Output Channel pop-up menu, and then slide the Cyan
and Magenta sliders toward the right until the brightness
looks as close to the original as you can get (Figure 8.80).
Turn the Preview check box off and back on again to
compare the original to the end result. Once you have the
image as close as you can get to the look of the original,
click OK and then drag the Cyan and Magenta channels to
the trash at the bottom of the Channels panel. Finally, to
get a more appropriate shade of yellow, double-click to the
right of the name of the Yellow channel in the Channels
panel, so you can pick a new color and experiment until
the image looks the best it can (Figure 8.81).

Figure 8.80 Adding what used to be in the Cyan and
Magenta channels to the Black channel will compensate for

Figure 8.81 The final image is made out of only
two colors of ink!

using fewer inks.

Now that you’ve seen one example, let’s use the Channel
Mixer to convert a full-color image into a grayscale version.

While you might think that you could just choose Image >
Mode > Grayscale and be done with it, you’ll get better
quality by experimenting with the Channel Mixer. But
before you get started, go open the Channels panel and
click through all the channels. You’ll need to start with one

With Photoshop CS4, the Black
and White adjustment is the best
option, but the Channel Mixer is a
good alternative to other grayscale
conversion methods.

of those channels as the base of your grayscale conversion,

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so make note of which one displays the best grayscale ver-
sion of the image. In Figure 8.82, the Red channel provides
the best starting point.

Figure 8.82 The Red channel of a
color RGB image. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Choose Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer, and turn on
the Monochrome check box at the bottom of the dialog to
remove all the color from the image. To start with the chan-
nel you liked best, move the appropriate slider to the 100%
position and move the other sliders to 0%. Now experiment
with moving the sliders to the right and left to see how
they affect the image (Figure 8.83). As you move a slider
toward the right, the image gets brighter, necessitating that
you move another slider toward the left to compensate. By
using different mixes of the channels, you’ll get different
grayscale results. There’s no obvious formula for getting
the best results; you just have to experiment until you like
the detail, contrast, and brightness (Figure 8.84). A good
general rule is that getting the sliders to add up to 100%
should deliver an image that’s close to the same brightness
as the original image. Once you like what you have, click
OK and then choose Image > Mode > Grayscale.

304

Figure 8.83 Start with the channel that looked the best,
such as the Red channel.

Figure 8.84 One of many end results you could get with a
few minutes of experimentation.

III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

Gradient Map

The Gradient Map (Image > Adjustments > Gradient Map)
does a rather simple and unusual thing: It ﬁrst converts an
image to grayscale, and then replaces the shades of gray in
the image with different colors that show up in a gradient
(Figure 8.85). When you ﬁrst open the dialog, it defaults

to a black-and-white gradient, which should just make the
image look grayscale. If you click the down arrow to the
right of the gradient preview, you’ll be able to choose a
preset gradient to replace the shades of gray that were in
the original image (Figures 8.86 and 8.87). If you prefer to
bypass the preset gradients and create your own gradient,
click in the middle of the gradient preview to access the
Gradient Editor. To learn how to create your own gradi-
ents, read about the Gradient tool in Chapter 1, “Tools and
Panels Primer.”

Figure 8.85 The Gradient Map dialog.

Figure 8.86 The original image.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 8.87 Gradient Map replaces
brightness levels with different colors.

You can use the Gradient Map command to transform a
backlit image into one that looks like it was taken at sunset
(Figures 8.88 and 8.89). All you have to do is create a
gradient that starts with black and slowly fades to orange
and then yellow (Figure 8.90). If you want more of a
silhouetted image, just slide the black color swatch in the

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Gradient Editor toward the right until you no longer see
much detail in the subject of the photo (Figure 8.91).

Figure 8.88 The original image. (©2008 Dan Ablan.) Figure 8.89 The result of applying a black, orange, yellow
gradient map.

Figure 8.90 The three-color gradient
used to create Figure 8.89.

Figure 8.91 The result of dragging the black slider toward the middle of the
gradient.

The Next Step

As you’ve seen in this chapter, a mind-boggling multitude
of techniques exist for manipulating the colors in your
images. You don’t have to know or remember how to use
all of these techniques—just try the ones that seem most
comfortable and stick with them for a while. Then, once
you feel conﬁdent with those tricks, read this chapter again
and add a few more techniques to your adjustment arsenal.
Some of the best methods to use on a regular basis are
Hue/Saturation, Auto Color, and the Color Replacement
tool. But don’t just use those three; instead, try them all
and ﬁnd your own favorites.

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