Inverting Your Photo in Photoshop for Natural Color Correction

There are plenty of ways you can color correct an image, but here’s a technique you might not have learned before. this technique from In this 6-minute tutorial by f64 Academy, learn how inverting the colors in your photos can help you effectively remove color casts.

The technique enables you to properly determine the color you need to use to counteract ugly color casts, allowing you to remove them from the image. Adjustments using a single white balance slider may not be as effective, as you aren’t able to adjust the saturation or hue of the cast you’re adding.

Here’s a before and after comparison of the sample shot in the tutorial:

First, just invert the colors. Set up a duplicate layer of your image, and then hit Ctrl+I (Cmd+I for Mac users) on your keyboard.

Each color in the inversion shows you what you need to apply to remove the cast in a particular area. So to determine the overall color you should apply, you need to take an average.

To do this, navigate to Filter > Blur > Average in the toolbar.

This will spit out one flat color in that layer which you can use to correct the cast. Apply a “Soft Light” blending mode, and it’s already done a pretty good job at removing that cast.

But you’re not done just yet! Apply a hue/saturation adjustment layer, as shown in the screenshot below, and attach it to the layer where you created the adjustment cast.

Now you can move the “Saturation” and “Lightness” sliders. Saturation will affect the exact color of the cast you’ve created, so you can perfectly match it to counteract the cast you wish to remove. Lightness will allow you to adjust its intensity.

Check out the full video above to see exactly how this technique is done. You can also subscribe to f64 Academy on YouTube for more tutorials like this one.

(via f64 Academy via ISO 1200)