Good photo editing starts with getting the right exposure and color balance. If your photos are too dark, too bright, or have awkward color casts, they can look flat or unappealing, no matter how well-composed the shot is. Adjusting the light and color is the foundation of most photo edits, and mastering these adjustments is key to taking your photos to the next level.
In this article, we’ll explore the basics of correcting light and color in your photos, with easy-to-follow techniques that you can use to improve your images, whether you’re using a smartphone or desktop editing software.
1. Correcting Exposure and Brightness
Exposure refers to how much light reaches your camera’s sensor, and it plays a vital role in determining the overall brightness of your image. A correctly exposed photo should have detail in both the bright and dark areas. If an image is too bright or too dark, it loses detail and can appear washed out or underexposed.
Adjusting Exposure
- Increase Exposure: If your photo is too dark, you can increase the exposure to brighten the entire image. Be cautious, as overexposing can result in loss of detail in the bright areas.
- Decrease Exposure: If your image is too bright and details are lost in the highlights, you can reduce the exposure to bring back details in the overexposed areas.
Adjusting Brightness and Contrast
- Brightness: Brightness refers to the overall lightness or darkness of the image. Adjusting the brightness can help correct exposure problems or fine-tune the look of your image.
- Contrast: Contrast is the difference between the light and dark areas of your photo. Increasing contrast will make the bright parts brighter and the dark parts darker, giving the image more depth and making it visually striking.
Highlights and Shadows
In addition to exposure and brightness, the Highlights and Shadows sliders can be used to adjust specific areas of the image.
- Highlights: These control the brightness of the light areas. Reducing the highlights can help recover details in overexposed areas, like the sky or reflections.
- Shadows: Shadows control the dark areas of your image. Increasing the shadows can bring out details in dark or underexposed areas, like the subject’s face in a portrait.
2. Correcting White Balance
White balance ensures that the colors in your image are true to life, correcting any color casts caused by different light sources. Without proper white balance, your images might appear too warm (yellow/orange) or too cool (blue).
Adjusting White Balance
Most editing apps, such as Lightroom or Snapseed, offer automatic white balance correction, but you can also manually adjust the white balance using sliders:
- Temperature: This slider adjusts the overall warmth of the image. Move it to the left to cool down the image (adding blue tones) or to the right to warm it up (adding yellow/orange tones).
- Tint: The tint slider adjusts the green-magenta balance of the image. If your photo has a greenish or magenta cast, you can use this slider to correct it.
When correcting white balance, keep an eye on skin tones and natural colors to ensure they look realistic.
Using the Eyedropper Tool
Some photo editing programs have an eyedropper tool that lets you select a neutral color (such as a white or gray area) to automatically set the correct white balance. This is especially helpful when you’re unsure about the light’s color temperature.
3. Adjusting Colors: Saturation, Vibrance, and Hue
Color is a major part of your photo’s aesthetic, and adjusting the color can help enhance or completely change the mood of an image. There are several ways to adjust color in your photos, from simple saturation tweaks to advanced color grading.
Saturation
- Saturation refers to the intensity of the colors in your image. Increasing saturation makes the colors more vivid, while decreasing it desaturates the colors, making the image appear more muted or even black-and-white.
- When to Use: Increase saturation to make a colorful scene more vivid or decrease it if the colors are too intense or unnatural.
Vibrance
- Vibrance is a more subtle version of saturation. It increases the intensity of the more muted colors without affecting the already vibrant colors, which is especially useful for portraits where you want to enhance the skin tone without making it look too harsh.
- When to Use: Use vibrance when you want to add color to your image but keep the colors balanced and natural.
Hue
- Hue controls the overall color tone of your image. By adjusting the hue, you can shift the colors of your photo. For example, changing the hue might turn a blue sky into a more greenish or purplish shade.
- When to Use: Hue adjustments are useful for creative effects, or to correct an image where the color tone is off due to lighting.
HSL Adjustments (Hue, Saturation, Luminance)
The HSL panel gives you the ability to adjust individual colors in your photo, such as enhancing the blues in the sky or making the reds in a sunset more vivid.
- Hue: Adjusts the color itself.
- Saturation: Controls the intensity of a specific color.
- Luminance: Controls the brightness of specific colors. For example, increasing the luminance of greens can make a forest scene look brighter.
4. Using Curves for Precise Adjustments
The Curves tool is a more advanced way to adjust exposure, contrast, and color in your photos. It allows for fine control over the light and dark areas of your image.
Adjusting the Tone Curve
- Tone Curve: The tone curve adjusts the overall brightness and contrast by allowing you to manipulate the image’s highlights, midtones, and shadows. By adding points to the curve and adjusting them, you can create a custom look for your photo.
- When to Use: Use the tone curve for precise adjustments to contrast or to give your photo a specific mood. For example, pulling down the shadows on the curve will give the photo a darker, moodier tone.
RGB Curves for Color Correction
- RGB Curves: The RGB curve adjusts the individual red, green, and blue channels of the image, allowing for targeted color correction. If your photo has an unwanted color cast (for example, too much green), you can use the RGB curves to remove it.
5. Fine-Tuning with Local Adjustments
Sometimes, you don’t want to adjust the whole image—just certain areas. Local adjustments allow you to apply changes to specific parts of the photo.
Adjustment Brush
The Adjustment Brush lets you paint over areas of the image to apply changes, such as brightening up shadows or increasing contrast in certain areas, while leaving the rest of the image untouched.
Graduated Filter
The Graduated Filter tool is useful for applying gradual changes across the image, such as brightening the sky without affecting the foreground. It’s perfect for landscape photography where the lighting varies between the sky and the ground.
Radial Filter
The Radial Filter allows you to apply adjustments to a specific area of the image in a circular or elliptical shape. It’s useful for creating vignettes or drawing attention to a subject by darkening the outer edges.
Conclusion
Correcting light and color are the foundations of good photo editing, and understanding how to adjust exposure, white balance, and saturation will make a significant difference in the quality of your images. Whether you’re correcting a poorly exposed shot or enhancing a perfectly balanced photo, mastering these basic edits will help you create professional-looking images that stand out. As you practice, you’ll develop a better understanding of how to use light and color to achieve the exact look you want.