How to Color Correct Portraits in Adobe Photoshop

When it comes to portraiture, the power color has to make or break even your best images is not to be underestimated. In this video, Aaron Nace of PHLEARN walks you through how to correct the colors in Adobe Photoshop.

There are so many moving parts when it comes to color. Not only do you need a camera that does a good job of capturing accurate and pleasing colors (which is almost a freebie these days), but you need to ensure you have a calibrated monitor that is also calibrated for the lighting it's in, and proper post-production.

To give you an example of how wrong this can go, a decade ago I bought a new monitor, and it was such an upgrade, I forgot to calibrate it; silly — I'm aware. I did a shoot of an aspiring actress and the portrait I took of her really resonated with me. Looking back, I'm not that sure why — it's fine, but I really felt it was special at the time, perhaps because of how interesting she was. I took the image back to my computer and edited it on my new monitor.

When I published it, I got slammed in the comments by people saying she looked ill. I was mortified until I realized they were talking about green hues. It wasn't my eyes failing me either; the new monitor leaned heavily toward magenta. So, I calibrated the monitor and then used a similar technique to the one in this video to fix the portrait. I won't be making that mistake again.

Rob Baggs's picture

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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1 Comment

i am no retouching expert at all but all of this seems odd, first thing first adjust white balance then play with the adjustment layer to your liking