Chapter 3. Changing and Adjusting Colors

Almost any photograph can benefit from some simple color or lighting corrections. For example, you might find that a vivid sunset you photographed ends up looking more red than orange, or that an outdoor snapshot is too dark to make out any details. Luckily, with Photoshop Elements, you’re never stuck with a roll of bad-looking film. Photoshop Elements provides a surprisingly powerful set of color correction tools, with both manual and automatic adjustments, so you can fine-tune your images as much as you want.

In this chapter, we review Photoshop Elements’ color options and when you’ll most likely want to use them. I’ll also show you how to make sure colors display and print accurately (also known as color management) and how to correct the colors and tones in your images. Along the way, I’ll shed some light on why the most obvious color-enhancement options are not always the best choices for improving the color in your image.