Quick Tip—Remove a color cast in Photoshop

Bad color casts like this can usually be quickly cleaned up with this tip. (Copyright 2009/Andrew Boyd)

Here’s a great, quick way to clean up a bad color cast in Photoshop. Maybe you had a mixed-light situation. Or maybe you simply had your camera set for the wrong color temperature, (say, still having your camera set on fluorescent lighting but shooting in tungsten lighting). Regardless, here’s the first thing I always try when a photo has a really bad color cast. It cleans up most problems quickly.

Step 1.  Go to Image>Adjustments>Levels (Control-L in Windows,  Cmd-L on a  Mac).

Step 2. Select the Red Channel from the Channels pull-down menu.

The Channels pull-down menu inside of Levels is the key to this tip.

Step 3. Move the shadow and highlight points to the edges of the histogram “mountain.”

You want your shadow and highight points to just touch the edge of the historgram "mountain."

Step 4. Repeat for the Green and Blue channels.

The color will look crazy as you work. Don't worry. It will clean up in the end.

Voila!  Your color cast is magically cleaned up!

The final result: color cast is removed and the resulting image looks accurate.(Copyright 2009/Andrew Boyd)

Try this on a few different photos with color cast problems. Photoshop is like jazz, there are lots of ways to do most things and they can all get you where you want to go. Experiment!  

Did this Quick Tip  work for the images you had?  Or do you have a different favorite cleanup technique? Please let me know if this worked and you’d like more Photoshop Quick Tips! —DiscerningPhotog