Learn How to Instantly Remove Color Casts in Photoshop

Liron Samuels

Liron Samuels is a wildlife and commercial photographer based in Israel. When he isn’t waking up at 4am to take photos of nature, he stays awake until 4am taking photos of the night skies or time lapses. You can see more of his work on his website or follow him on Facebook.

Color_Cast_1

Color casts are quite possibly one of the most annoying and frustrating issues photographers encounter during post processing, but unfortunately sometimes they cannot be avoided. In other cases photographers simply do not know how to correct this issue in camera.

Often caused by certain types of light or filters, color casts can be a royal pain in the butt to remove and many try and fail to successfully do so.

Enter Jimmy McIntyre’s latest video tutorial where he shows how to remove color casts with the click of a button.

YouTube video

As you can see in the video, Jimmy’s color cast was caused by a neutral density filter. In general, cheap and powerful ND filters tend to cause strong color casts.

In this case the filter caused a strong blue cast, and Jimmy rightfully suggests that you take a test shot when using filters to see if a manual white balance adjustment is in order to save extra work in post.

If you didn’t do so for whatever reason, simply follow this step in Photoshop:

Image -> Adjustments -> Match Color…

Once in the Match Color menu simply check the ‘Neutralize’ box and you’re done!

Color_Cast_2

Jimmy compares the color-corrected image to an image that was taken without the filter and while they are not identical color-wise, this quick and easy fix did an amazing job. This is definitely more efficient than manually correcting via the white balance tool.

In order to ensure that your color casts have been properly corrected you will want a calibrated monitor. Check out this hands-on review of the Datacolor Spyder 5 Elite to see how that can be achieved.

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Liron Samuels

Liron Samuels

Liron Samuels is a wildlife and commercial photographer based in Israel. When he isn’t waking up at 4am to take photos of nature, he stays awake until 4am taking photos of the night skies or time lapses. You can see more of his work on his website or follow him on Facebook.

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22 responses to “Learn How to Instantly Remove Color Casts in Photoshop”

  1. Peter Ford Avatar

    You might want to straighten those verticals first, or use the correct lens!

    1. SA Avatar
      SA

      I think it was intentional.

  2. Jörn Sönksen Avatar

    is there anything silimar in premiere to get rid of those ND Color casts?nice one…

  3. Dromeda Avatar
    Dromeda

    Would this neutralise the orange colour cast in a scanned negative too? It’s sounds too good…

  4. David Pimborough Avatar
    David Pimborough

    That’s a handy tip thank you :)

  5. Bijutoha Avatar

    Glad to see it. Unique at all. I have another collection through this .. http://goo.gl/EqjA1g

  6. Taposy Rabeya Avatar

    Such an excellent and helpful tutorial. I appreciate your work.

  7. soniya Avatar

    Very cool Photoshop Tutorial and especially very helpful for beginner .

  8. Hr Habib Avatar

    good tutorial, thank you or your good post

  9. Abdullah Allamin Avatar

    Excellent tutorial, thanks for sharing.

  10. Zoe Jackson Avatar

    Thanks for this detailed color casts correction article. It will be very helpful for the beginner. Following the tips and tricks of this article, anyone will be able to correct color casts properly.

  11. Rodney D. Doss Avatar

    I am a Photoshop worker so this tutorial very help for me!

  12. Jamila James Avatar

    Nice post. Learn a lot from your post. Thanks for share.

  13. matlap Avatar
    matlap

    very useful
    thank you Jimmy..

  14. jason Avatar
    jason

    dude – got to say thanks. was working with layers –> filters for correcting and other tricks. this is QUICK, SIMPLE, and EASY! A millino thanks!

  15. MD Yusuf Avatar

    Hi Liron, Your tutorial useful & it helped me out a lot. I am getting a lot of positive information. Thank you.

  16. Taranq Avatar
    Taranq

    I personally prefer the Remove Color Cast option from the now free Google NIK collection (Color Effects Pro 4)

    1. Linda Hall Avatar
      Linda Hall

      WOW, I have never used the Remove Color Cast option in NIK before, but it worked beautifully on a difficult image, where all techniques in Photoshop failed. Thank you!

  17. Mr Rohit Avatar

    hey Liron Samuels ……… great tutorial to increase my photography skill .

  18. Clip and Touch Avatar

    Liron, you are really great! I am working hard on it. Now I know that you know that it can. Thank heavens for God’s unwavering grace.

  19. jon jog Avatar

    Special cool Photoshop Tutorial. Thanks you.

  20. Abdullah Allamin Avatar

    Think, this tutorial will helm me a lot. Helpful Photoshop tutorial and very easy to learn it.