How to remove red cast

[Gerald McClaren]

I had tried several methods in photoshop cs2 to remove this red cast. First, I tried the level adjustment. I adjusted the red, green, and blue colors. Second, I tried the threshold method finding the dark, midtone, and highlight areas, however, the skin tone didn't too good. Finally, I tried adjusting the red color using the hue saturation method, levels, and color balance, but the skin tone doesn't look too good to me. I even tried photo whiz. It is a software that remove most color cast from a photo.
Can someone please give some information and illustrations on how to remove this red cast. Thank you.

[amica999]

Gerald, the easiest way - at least for me - is following: make a composite layer and duplicate again: ctrl-shift-alt-e for PC..not sure on a mac. Apply a filter-Blur-Average on this. take color picker and pick the color of the blur layer. Go back to 1. compo and apply a photo filter - pick color and choose the one you picked up from the blurred one, than just inverse tha a and b channels in LAB (do leave the lightness alone) for example if a shows a 35 jut put a minus in front (-35) adjust opacity to liking...Hope this helps

You can also use the curves eyedroppers (example below was done with this method) pick the darkest important point of the subject - in this case I picked the girls hair; for white ich picked one of the lighter stripes of the girls pullover, and grey....I moved the grey picker until the info palette showed something mostly neutral

[igot2pman]

Amica999,

Very interesting with the blur... never seen that. Saved and noted.

Just an addition to what you have already said. If your going to use the curves method, You can use image>>adjust>>threshold to find the darkest and lightest parts.

-Keven

[0lBaldy]

Just another way using a simple levels adjustment + a little painting.. Skin tones are tough to match up with someone else's ideals of what they should be... so it is up to you to adjust to your preferences

BeforeCurves AfterCurves WorkFlow

[TommyO]

Gerald,
All good suggestions from the others.
This is also a very normal type of fading we see in color images. The key is to "assist" Photoshop in defining what was originally white and black, like what OlBaldy describes in his post.

The most common method is to open a Levels or Curves adjustment layer and redefine those two points. However, as Amica999 and Keven point out, how do you know ? I also like the Threshold adjustment layer. Just open a Threshold adj. layer temporarily and move the slider from left to right. From the left, the first pixels to start showing up are typically the "black" pixels. Find a good grouping of these that represent the actual image, not damage. Do the same from the right most side. The last pixels to disappear are the "white" pixels. Again, look for a good grouping that represent image detail, not damage.

Then open a Levels adj. layer. Click the black point eye dropper, then click on those black pixels. Do the same for white.

After that, merge up your layers (ctrl-alt-shft-E) and open Image> Adjustments> Variations. You can then move through slight shifts in hue and narrow in on the most appealing image. If you only want to apply those variations to part of the image, add a layer mask, invert the mask to all black (ctrl-I), and paint in the variations using a soft low opacity white brush.

There are numerous ways to accomplish the same thing. That's what is so nice about Photoshop. But, the method above is quick, easy to adjust, and easy to remember. Best of luck with it !

[chillin]

I assumed that the colors degraded at different rates & to correct them I used selective levels adjustments with masking.

[Swampy]

The Average Blur technique for quick correction of a color cast is one of the video tutorials on my site. I used it once at 100%, merge down, then again at 50% opacity, merged down. I then took the image into LAB mode and did some more color correction there.

[winu]

here's another good video tutorial for removing color cast.....
http://www.thedigitalphotographyconn...ayer.php?ID=37

[Gerald McClaren]

Hi! Everyyone, thanks for your help, I had tried Swampy tutorial on how to remove the red cast, and it worked perfectly. I also thanked Olbaldy for color correcting the photo, well done. Winu, thanks for the video tutorial on removing color cast, extra information is always a great help. Thanks again for all of your help.

Gerald McClaren

[unimatrix001]

I made a duplicate layer used threshold to select a black and white point, then created a new layer filled with 50% grey set to difference used threshold to choose midtone point. also did selective painting on sky, tree and ground areas, also on the yellow on her shirt.

[Flora]

Great jobs and great tips!!!

Here is my result using 'Color Balance' and 'Selective Colors' Adjustment Layers on selections of the image.

[Kraellin]

you definitely have the gift, flora. i'm thinking that's probably better than the original photo!

[learninlady]

I've given it a try. This for me was very difficult, but fun to do.

[learninlady]

I think I need a monitor calabration or something, after I post a pic its darker on the forum than on my psp software. So I lightened it forgive me for the repeat.

[klassylady25]

There are so many that have answered your question well, so I hope that you do not mind me working with your photo.