Adjusting color balance
You can often improve a photo dramatically by adjusting the colors. Different types of lighting, cameras, and the processing that occurs inside the camera can cause incorrect coloring in photos. Scanned images may have unnatural color casts.
To create natural-looking colors and remove any color cast in your image, you can use the various color-balancing commands in Corel PaintShop Pro. By applying the commands to a selection or an entire image, you can do the following:
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tonally balance a photo’s colors without affecting the luminance
of the photo
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increase or decrease the red, blue, or green color channel by a
percentage of the given channel
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restore color and contrast to faded photos
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create a photographic negative by replacing each pixel color with
its opposite (for example, replace blue with yellow, black with
white, yellow with blue, white with black, and so on)
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adjust the amount of red, green, and blue in your image as a way
to make color corrections by changing the overall color cast
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| To adjust color balance |
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Edit workspace
1 |
Choose Adjust  Color Balance.
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The Color Balance dialog box appears. |
2 |
Mark the Smart White Balance check box.
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This allows Corel PaintShop Pro to evaluate and make minor corrections to the image automatically. |
3 |
Drag the temperature slider to the left for cooler colors (more
blue), or to the right for warmer colors (more orange).
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4 |
Click OK.
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If you know what color temperature the photo should be, you
can set precise tonal balance values by marking the Advanced
Options check box and typing or setting the temperature values
in the Temperature and Tint controls in the White Balance
group box. You can tweak the colors by adjusting values in the
Temperature and Tint controls in the Enhance Color Balance
group box.
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| To mix color channels |
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Edit workspace
1 |
Choose Adjust Color Channel Mixer.
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The Channel Mixer dialog box appears. |
2 |
Do one of the following:
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• |
To maintain a color image, select a color channel to edit from
the Output channel drop-list.
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• |
To change the image to monochrome (which looks like
grayscale but has a color depth of 16 million colors), mark the
Monochrome check box. Grey appears in the Output channel
drop-list.
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3 |
In the Source Channels group box, type or set values in the Red,
Green, and Blue controls, or adjust the corresponding sliders, to
change the percentage of that color in the channel.
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For example, if you are editing the Red channel and set the Red control to 50%, the amount of red in the image is reduced to 50% of its original amount. |
4 |
Adjust the Constant slider.
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The slider is originally set at zero. If you want to darken the color channel, drag the slider to the left. If you want to brighten the color channel, drag the slider to the right. |
5 |
Click OK.
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| To correct faded colors |
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Edit workspace
1 |
Choose Adjust Color Fade Correction.
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Drag in the Before pane to center an important part of the image (such as a face). |
2 |
Adjust the value in the Amount of correction control until the
image looks the most natural.
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The default value is 45. |
Use the minimum value that produces a good correction. If you apply too much correction, highlight and shadow areas may lose detail, and objects may blend together. |
3 |
Click OK.
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| To create a photographic negative |
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Edit workspace
• |
Choose Image Negative Image.
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| To change color cast |
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Edit workspace
1 |
Choose Adjust Color Red/Green/Blue.
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The Red/Green/Blue dialog box appears. |
2 |
In the Red, Green, and Blue controls, type or set a value to change
the percentage for each color.
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A value of 0% preserves the original value. To add more of a color, use a positive number. To remove some of a color, use a negative number. |
Reducing the amount of blue adds a yellow cast to the image, reducing the amount of green adds a magenta cast to the image, and reducing the amount of red adds a cyan cast to the image. |
3 |
Click OK.
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