How to Use Color Balance to Perfect Photos

What is Color Balance?

Cameras often emphasize just one primary color, mostly red or blue, depending on the camera, and for that reason, adjustments are required to intensify colors and to create a balance between reds, greens, and blues. Color Balance is often referred to as Gray Balance or White Balance because the main goal of this method is to make all colors as neutral and as realistic as they can possibly be.

If you are just starting out as a photographer and you are looking for information that will show you how to use color balance to create better photos you've come to the right place because in this tutorial we are going to show you all you need to know about color balance.

When will you need Color Balance?

Obviously, you are not going to need color balance when working with black and white images, but that is just about the only type of photographic image that doesn't require color balance adjustments. All color photos can benefit from adjusting the balance of primary colors, regardless of how perfect the camera settings were when you took the photo.

Color Balance or White Balance is frequently used to tone down any color that makes the photograph look less realistic, and the goal of balancing colors in a photo is to create the image that depicts colors as they are seen in nature. As we already mentioned some cameras emphasize blues while others highlight reds, and for that reason, features like hue or saturation are used during the post-production to reduce the amount of a certain color.

Nearly all photo editing programs allow you to adjust the color balance, by altering the levels of reds, greens, and blues. Finding the realistic balance of primary colors is a task that demands patience and practice.

How to Use Color Balance to Perfect Your Photos?

Even though most photo editing programs provide the tools required to balance colors, Fotophire is the best choice you can make if you want to avoid a steep learning curve. The Wondershare's software allows its users to easily adjust color values in their photos or reduce the difference between the darkest shadows and highlights.

In order to start using Color Balance in Fotophire you first need to open the photo you want to edit in the software's Editor mode, and then you should click on the Adjustments menu. You'll be able to see tabs such as Vignetting, Creative Blur, Tone Curve or Color Balance. After you click on the Color Balance tab, you will see three different options, Master, Split Toning and Three-Way. Please note that you can use just one of these options at the time.

Master - This feature lets you balance colors across an entire image. You can drag the tiny circle located on the circular color palette to the desired area of the color spectrum manually or if you'd like to have more precision Fotophire provides boxes just below the color palette, next to the sliders where you can enter degrees and percentages that will place the hue and saturation values at the exact place of the color spectrum where you want them to be. Make sure to click on the Preserve Luminosity checkbox before altering the hue and saturation values.

Split Toning - The second Color Balance tool will allow you to adjust shadows and highlights. It often happens that pictures have certain colors in the darkest and brightest area of a photo that contribute to the overall lack of realism in a photo. You can find the perfect shadows and highlight values by dragging the hue and saturation sliders to the right. The changes you are making will become visible while you're dragging a slider, so pay close attention to your photo in order to know where to stop.

Three-way - The Shadows, Midtones, and Highlight color palettes will enable you to adjust separately all color tones from the darkest to the brightest. This feature is quite useful if you want to have more control over the color balance process since it allows you to see how your photo looks like when you adjust just one out of three options.