Remembering Color Complements

Hi Viewers -

Photoshop is an excellent tool for balancing color within images. If a photograph looks a little green or a little red or a little yellow overall, it has a "color cast". There are several reasons why a photograph may have a color cast. Digital cameras may make photographs that aren't exactly color balanced. You may sometimes take a digital photo indoors with incandescent or fluorescent lighting, causing your camera to record a yellow or green color cast.

To get rid of a color cast, you can start an adjustment layer for Color Balance. To do so, you'll need to remember the "color complements" of the problem color cast. Each of Red, Green, and Blue (the colors that make up the images you see on a computer monitor) have a color opposite (complement) that will neutralize the problem color. Here are those colors and their complements:

Red ----- Cyan
Green --- Magenta
Blue ---- Yellow

If your original image looks cyan, you'll need to add its complement, red. Red is placed opposite the Cyan slider. If your original image looks green, you'll need to add its complement, magenta. Magenta is placed opposite the Green slider.

If you can't remember the color complements, open any photograph in Photoshop and create a new adjustment layer for Color Balance to see them. Photoshop gives you the information in both of these places. Because you're always going to have Photoshop available in this class, identifying these color complements shouldn't be hard for you.