Quick Tips: Master Fundamental Colors in Photoshop

These layers contain the information about the adjustment only, and they are applied to the layers beneath them.

The Color Balance Adjustment Layer controls are exactly the same as the Color Balance controls accessed via Image>Adjustments>Color Balance. There are three sliding controls that enable the balance of opposing colours (red/green, yellow/blue and magenta/green) to be adjusted. Just the same as using Curves, increasing or decreasing the level of one specific colour has the opposite effect on its opposing colour. Therefore, an image can be warmed by reducing the amount of cyan and blue, which means increasing the level of red and yellow, or made cooler by adding more blue and cyan and reducing the amount of yellow and red.

The majority of Color Balance adjustments are made to the midtones, but it is possible to work separately on both the shadows and highlights as well. You can access them using the Tone Selection option, which is found at the top of the panel.

Alter shades with Hue/Saturation

Photoshop's Hue/Saturation controls are great for boosting colours, but they can also make sure colours are just the right shade. For example, grass can often look yellow, and boosting the saturation of the greens won't work as there's very little green present. However, adjusting the hue of the yellows towards the green area of the spectrum will do the trick.

To select the yellows, either locate Yellows in the drop-down under Master, or select the Eyedropper tool and click on a relevant part of the image.

Uesful Tip: Auto Color

There's no point in creating work for yourself. If an image needs colour correction, it's often worthwhile letting Photoshop have a crack at sorting the problem out automatically. To do this, simply select Image>Auto Color. If that doesn't get it spot on, you can always make further adjustments using the Hue/Saturation and Color Balance controls. For maximum flexibility, apply the Auto Color corrections to a Duplicate Layer so it can be quickly removed.

Tutorial by Cojeack Forn

Thank you for reading my tutorial! I'm very passionate about editing softwares like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects so I know a thing or two about them. - Cojeack Forn

6 comments on “Quick Tips: Master Fundamental Colors in Photoshop”

vendle says:

April 9, 2016 at 12:55 pm

I dont know that much about colors, so I just crank around on the sliders until things start to look cool :)

Mahmuda Hamid says:

March 25, 2015 at 1:08 am

I hope all the steps of layer style looks professional. It will help me more.

Anonymous says:

February 2, 2015 at 9:11 pm

Wonderful

Maidul Islam says:

October 17, 2014 at 4:20 am

Incredible work man!

Maidul Islam says:

September 13, 2014 at 8:22 pm

Very informative and useful read your article very much. Thanks a lot for sharing with us.

safouan says:

July 23, 2014 at 8:17 pm

PhotoShop very good