Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual

Quick Fixer-Uppers

Before you dive into the murky waters of manual adjustments using Levels and Curves, it’s worth trying to make Photoshop do some of this stuff automatically. As luck would have it, the program has lots of auto fixer-uppers, which were improved quite a bit back in CS6.

For example, Adobe changed the mathematical voodoo that Photoshop uses when you apply the Auto Color adjustment, and when you click the Auto button in a Levels, Curves, or Brightness & Contrast adjustment (all discussed in this chapter). Instead of the old Enhance Per Channel Contrast method (wherein the red, green, and blue channels were adjusted individually so that the highlights got a little lighter and the shadows got a little darker—whether they needed it or not), Photoshop now uses the new “Enhance Brightness and Contrast” method instead, which makes the program analyze your image and then adjust the brightness and contrast accordingly. Bottom line: You no longer have to change the way these automatic tools work in order to get good results. Hip hip hooray!

Note

While you may get satisfactory results using combinations of the following adjustments, they’re nothing compared to what you can do if you master Levels and Curves (both covered later in this chapter). In other words, use the methods in this section only while you’re learning or as quick-and-dirty fixes.

Fixing Color

If your image looks flat (like it has no contrast) or has a noticeable color cast, give the following methods a spin:

• Auto ...