With a night image of yours open in Photoshop, look over what is correct with it and what you would change. We are not trying to remake the picture, nor drastically change or reinvent how it was made. We are simply looking for the elements that would make a good picture great. I'll bet one of the items you noticed is color correction.
In this lesson, we will discuss how to make the color corrections you want to make as well as explain why the color at night is not what it should be. Some of it is physics, technical jargon, theory of light and color, but most of what we will see is simple color manipulation because you are changing the color of what already has taken place and making it look better.
The main menu we will be using is the Levels menu which we have visited twice before. Simple pushes in the three channels will bring your ok image to where it should be.
So, when it comes to nighttime images, make sure you look for realism in your color correction. This brings us to another few items...
Your monitor must be somewhat close to what you experience in your prints otherwise you are chasing your tail so to speak. There are color adjustments on your monitor that you should at least be familiar with. I use a "6500K" brightness which seems to be the most natural lighting. Many people I know insist on using "5000K" brightness while others like the "9600K" setting. It really is up to you, the way your prints look verses your monitor, and what you need form your monitor brilliance to see the detail of your shadows in your pictures. There are ways to calibrate your printer, monitor, scanner (if you still use one), and other elements with in your color management arena. But are we trying to put the cart before the horse here? Use your gut on color and always examine your prints by window light... more on all of this later.
I hope this helps you make use of this important instructions on getting better color. See you in the next lesson...
Adobe® Photoshop Class #10 Open a nighttime image, perform Color Correction and Save it
If you have ever tried to take a picture with your digital camera at night, you probably have noticed much less of a degree of proficiency compared to daytime pictures. And, unless you are using a tripod and an expensive professional camera, you're probably looking at a lot of blackness. On the off chance that you actually got an image worth pursuing, it will probably require color adjustments of some sort. This is the lesson that will discuss that concept. Let's look into what PhotoShop has to offer.
Here is the Levels menu, left, open and showing the first color adjustment that most people would be happy with seen above. But all we did was darken the image to compensate for the long time exposure. It did not fix the color, just the depth of contrast.
Ok, now lets drop down the RGB Channels selector and see if the Red channel will help us with better reds of the image. By just moving the mid-tone adjustment of the Red channel, we can see a definite improvement over the red areas of the fireworks and reflection of them in the lake... but they look a bit pink.
Here is where we bring in the Blue-to-Yellow channel mixer. In the bottom menu, we see a similar number setting from the Blue channel menu. Remember that the color red in printing terms is a combination of magenta (reddish-pink) and yellow inks. Similarly, the best reds in an image are controlled by the Red and Blue channels. The more yellow there is in a red tone, the more orange it is. Conversely, the less yellow there is in a red tone, the more pink-red it is.
Another thing to avoid is to get too dark or too light an image. Printing too dark an image will not yield good prints and too light looks like they just need to print darker... ughhhh!
