Understanding Color Editing

Any good photographer knows that there are a lot of things that you can do to a photo in the post-shoot or editing phase. If any otherwise great image has poor color, low density, or a poor composition, you can correct these things using any one of a number of photo editing softwares.

Most people new to photo editing quickly pick up on cropping and some even will go so far as to use filters to smooth and fix minor problems. What stymies a lot of people, though, is how to balance the colors of the photos. Sometimes when you want to add a certain tone, you actually need to take away another, and vice versa, which can get a little confusing for someone just starting out. Color balancing is actually fairly easy, however, once you get used to just a few things.

Cyan, Magenta, Yellow

When you go to edit the colors in your photo, the first thing you’ll likely see is that you don’t have a full list of colors – you just have three: Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow, or green/blue, pink, and yellow. What you may not see, depending on your software, is that these three have partners:

Cyan – Red
Magenta – Green
Yellow – Blue

Put together, you now have the full rainbow of colors available for editing. But how do you manipulate Red, Green, and Blue, when all you have shown is Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow? This is where a little math comes into play.

When you add Cyan to a photo, you are essentially subtracting any Red tones. So if things are too warm, a little Cyan will cool them down.

When you add Magenta, you are subtracting Green. This is helpful when faces have a washed out appearance to them.
When you add Yellow, you are subtracting Blue. This is handy for shadows, and to warm up the color of skin tones.

When you subtract Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow, you are adding Red, Green, and Blue to the photo. So if the grass in a picture is a little blue looking, you want to take away a magenta and add a yellow to create a greener hue. The key here is balance; you are balancing the colors in the photo by adding and subtracting one color at a time.
Density

Another component to color editing that often gets overlooked is the density of the photo. In some cases, density refers to the amount of light visible, but in other cases it may refer to the amount of grain you can see. The more density you add, the darker the photo will become. Adding density is a good way of making colors look richer as well. If a photo seems washed out, and color balancing isn’t getting you the results you need, adding one or two points of density could be enough to boost the colors without changing them.

Keep in mind that while removing density will lighten a photo that is too dark, it can also make it appear grainy and washed out. So move slowly with adding and subtracting density from a photo until you get the results that you’re after. Generally, needing to add or subtract more than one or two density points means that you should retake the image.

Edit Your Color

Color editing can be a great way to ensure consistent results with your images. Get to know your photo editing software and the way it balances color to get more out of your work.