White Balance (photoshop tutorial)

I hope someone out there read the last tutorial, and I hope you learned something from it! Today I'm going to talk about that same image, and what you could do to make it even better.

This is our finished image from the last tutorial.  If you look at this image, yeah it's cute...but it's not "there" yet. It's missing something yes?

We need to fix something called white balance.  This image is too cool.  I'm going to show you a couple quick fixes for that.

The best thing you could do is shoot in RAW, and correct this in ACR or Lightroom.  It's a super easy fix, all you have to do is play with the temperature slider until it looks the way you want it too.  But, I'm writing this tutorial so it can help more people than those of us with DSLR's and the space to store RAW files.

Anyway...

If you feel your image is too cool, open up your image in photoshop.  Open up a Levels layer just like I showed you in the last tutorial.  This time find the white eyedropper.

Now find something white in the image.  Click on it.  You should see your image change instantly.

Ahhh!  Much better!  This method can be finicky though.  Sometimes it can be really extreme, and overly brighten skin tones.  So make sure you play with the opacity of the layer until you feel it looks right.

If that method just isn't working, you can try this way as well.  One thing I love about photoshop is that there are a million ways to accomplish something.  As you get more comfortable with photoshop you'll find what works better for you.  Go to your adjustment layers again (that ying yang looking symbol) and open up color balance.  Drag the first slider more towards red, and the last slider more towards yellow.  

I prefer this method because I feel like I have more control over what I'm doing.

Here's before and after:

 See the difference it can make!  Amazing!

White balance is extremely important to a getting a good image.  We've only just barely scratched the surface here, but I hope this helps someone out there and let me know if you have any questions!