White Balance

alt=”Editing Blue Channel with Levels” src=”https://www.photoshoptutorials.ws/images/stories/Photoshop%20Tutorials/Photo%20Restoration/White%20Balance/blue-channel.gif” />

Tune the Settings

Although the colors look much better now, it still doesn’t seem to look the scene I saw with my eyes. We’ll need to find out what’s wrong and make further adjustments to fix this.

Step 10

Select the top layer and press Ctrl+E to merge down.

alt=”Layers Merged” src=”https://www.photoshoptutorials.ws/images/stories/Photoshop%20Tutorials/Photo%20Restoration/White%20Balance/merge-down.gif” />

Step 11

Apply an Average filter (Filter> Blur> Average). The Average filter creates a fill of the average color of the image. We can see that the fill is a neutral blue color.

alt=”Average Filter Applied” src=”https://www.photoshoptutorials.ws/images/stories/Photoshop%20Tutorials/Photo%20Restoration/White%20Balance/average.gif” />
The hue identifies the most prominent color in the image and the saturation of the color shows how prominent the color is. What this means is that there’s more blue than any other color in the photo but only by a small amount. If the blue was a bright, vivid blue, it would mean that there’s more blue than any other color in the photo by a large amount.

Step 12

Because the average color is a neutral blue, we need to reduce the amount of blue just by a tiny bit. Before we do this, undo the previous two steps you’ve done by simply clicking the “Modify Levels Layer” state in the History pallet (Window> History).

alt=”The Layers pallet should contain two layers.” src=”https://www.photoshoptutorials.ws/images/stories/Photoshop%20Tutorials/Photo%20Restoration/White%20Balance/history-and-layers.gif” />

Step 13

Find an area on the cement that has a slight blue cast and use the Magnifier tool (M) to zoom into the area.

alt=”Magnify to the location bordered red.” src=”https://www.photoshoptutorials.ws/images/stories/Photoshop%20Tutorials/Photo%20Restoration/White%20Balance/blue-cast.jpg” />

Step 14

Double-click on the thumbnail of the adjustment layer to open the Levels tool. Inside the Levels tool, activate the Blue channel (Ctrl+3). We now need to move the middle input slider towards the right just a bit until the blue cast on the cement is gone. It may be difficult to make tiny adjustments when working on a tiny portion of the histogram. To make adjusting easier, click on the middle Input Levels field and press the down or up button to make changes. To remove the blue cast, I reduced the location to 0.49.