Color correct photos in Adobe Photoshop

Published on October 15, 2021

Adobe Photoshop has a super simple method to color correct your photos! If you’d rather watch the video tutorial of this process, click here or scroll down to the end of this page!

Want to download the image I used for this explanation? Click here. Now, let’s get started.

Color correct photos (fix white balance)

First we need to add a new ‘curves‘ adjustment layer. After you did that, you’ll see ‘Auto’ in the corner (see the image below). Click that.

The curve changed a little bit, but you probably won’t notice a big difference yet. Click on the striped icon in the right corner and select ‘Auto Options‘ (see image below).

A window with ‘Auto Color Correction Options‘ will open. Photoshop automatically selected one of the options, but there are other color correction options available. Try out the 4 algorithms to see what works best for your photo!

The ‘Enhance Per Channel Contrast’ and ‘Find Dark & Light Colors’ algorithms work best for color correcting this photo, so I use one of those (it’s also a matter of personal taste and preference which one you like best). You can select ‘Snap Neutral Midtones’ to see if that makes a difference, but this isn’t necessary.

The image below shows the original photo with the two options mentioned above next to it, so you can see the difference.

And that’s how you color correct a photo in just a couple of clicks!

There are several other methods you can use to color correct your photos. In this blog I will tell you more about another way to fix the while balance with a curves layer.

You can also color correct your photos in Adobe Lightroom (read more) or with the Camera Raw Filter (read more).