The Easiest and Most Efficient Way to Color Correct Any Image

White balancing shots is not always as easy of a task as it seems. Sometimes, a gray card cannot be used, other times the lighting is too poor and the colors don’t come out perfectly. However, Blake Rudis from f64 Academy has found an extremely efficient and quick solution to color correct any shots in three easy steps.

Rudis shows us in the video above how he color corrects his shots with a very simple process. He does it in Adobe Camera Raw, but the principles would remain similar no matter what software you use to process your raw files — only the sliders name would change. For example, vibrance would be saturation in Capture One.

The first step of his process is to crank up the vibrance until the dominant color can be identified. Then, he moves on to the second part which is simply neutralizing that color with the white balance tool. He starts with the temperature and then adjusts the tint. Finally, he brings the vibrance back down to normal, and the file is ready for additional adjustments.

Obviously, you could go even further and use local adjustments to make the whole picture neutral. In the second image Rudis uses to demo the technique, you can clearly see that the settings used are kind of a compromise between the streets and the building lights. Using the same technique but local adjustments instead of global ones would yield a more refined look, although less real.

What do you think of this technique? Do you use any other trick to color correct your images quickly and efficiently? I’d love to hear your process in the comments below.