Photoshop users have the opportunity to easily manipulate the colors of their photos using the Photoshop color mode. Seasoned photographers will often turn to Photoshop to smooth wrinkly skin in a portrait, brighten a sky in a landscape, or turn a color photo into a black and white masterpiece.
If you're looking to punch up your favorite snapshots before loading them onto your photo sharing site, head over to the Image menu in Photoshop.
The Image menu provides a variety of options to address the overall color of a photo. (Of course, if you would like to change color in just one area of the photo, Photoshop has tools to help you do that as well.) Take a moment to familiarize yourself with the Image menu before you take your next photo editing step.
The Mode option basically determines what kind of information is in the pixels of the image. If you open your image from its original location on your computer, it will probably be in CMYK, which stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black.
CMYK is the mode that printers use when printing a photograph. Therefore, if you intend to share your photos by printing them, make sure the mode is on CMYK.
RGB stands for Red, Green, Blue, which is the mode that is used by computer monitors and televisions. Inside each dot on a computer monitor or TV screen are three miniature light bulbs; one is red, one is green, and one is blue. Therefore, if you intend to upload your photos to a photosharing Web site, make sure you have selected the RGB mode.
The grayscale mode is a no-brainer; it turns your photos into varying shades of grey and is appropriate for printed photos and photo sharing online.
After selecting the appropriate mode, scroll down the Image menu to the Adjustments submenu. The Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, and Auto Color levels are built-in devices that will automatically adjust the colors of your image using sophisticated color matching tools.
If you prefer to adjust your colors on your own, play around with the Color Balance, Curves, Hue/Saturation, and Brightness/Contrast tools for the best results.
The simplest way to understand how these tools work is to simply open them and play around. As always, if you make an adjustment that you would like to change, simply undo your adjustment from the History menu.
