How to Remove Color Cast and Match Color in Photoshop – Make Better Composites 2021

In this photoshop tutorial, we’ll talk about how to remove color cast and match color in photoshop. These techniques will help make your composites blend together better. We will use the curves adjustment layer to auto color correct images and color match your subject to the background in your composite.

Remove Color Cast and Match Color in Photoshop

Today, I’ll show you how to remove color casts and match color in Photoshop. This will help you make better composites. So in this first image, I wanted to show you an example of where there was an obvious color cast.

Here you can see under all these trees. There are yellows and greens and color casts going on all over the image, all over the model. Now I’m going to take the model out of the image I used to content-aware fill just to show you.

So if I wanted to use this image for the composite, and, I wanted to put somebody else in this image or another object, I would have to make a choice. Do I want all of this color cast there right now?

You might want to remove most of this color cast and then put your subject in the image for your composite. But to take care of this color cast? We’re going to use a curves adjustment layer. So I’m going to create a curves adjustment layer.

Now, we could take care of the color cast by manually going to each channel and adjusting each of the red, green, and blue channels to minimize the color cast. But there’s an easier way if you hit alt or option and click on this auto button right here.

Photoshop has auto color correction options. Now, when you first bring this up, there may be a different default up here selected with any of these algorithms. Select, find dark and light colors. Also, click snap neutral mid-tones and click save as default.

So the next time that you click on auto, it’s going to default to this algorithm. So I’m going to say, OK, now you can see how each of the RGB channels, the red, green, blue have been adjusted, even the image that has no color cast now.

So if I turn this off, you can see before and after. And if I bring in the subject again, you can see now that the color cast is minimal and they’re still a little bit of color splashing on her.

And in the image, but not much. But you can determine how much of that color cast that you want to remove. And just to show you in the curves adjustment layer, I’ll take the opacity all the way over to the left zero opacity.

And you can put as much color class in the image as you want. But that’s an easy way to remove or reduce the color cast in an image. And like I say, this will help you with your composites, too.

And here’s the before and here’s the after.

How to Match a Subject to the Background – Easy Example

So I’m going to show you a composite that I worked on. And here’s my subject. And I wanted to put her in a bar environment where the light from the bar was kind of reflecting over everything.

So I had added a piece of the bar. Here are my background colors. And here is my subject that’s cut out. And I have a couple of extra layers here that I have added some glasses and some things. The important thing to note here is since she’s standing right next to all of these glasses and bottles up

here, you see that this should cast purples, magenta, as all these colors should cast onto her and everything on the bar. So with our composite, that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to make her blend in to the background.

So just like in the first example, we had the greens and yellows that cast over the subject there. That should happen here, too. There are a lot of ways to match a subject to the background. One way that is quick, we can use our background layer to do this.

So I’m going to duplicate the background. The background is a smart object. And instead of just duplicating it with command J going to right-click, and come to the option that says new smart object via a copy.

I’m just going to call this color match. And I’m going to bring it all the way to the top of the Layers panel. You need to drag it up to the top or press control on windows or command on Mac and hit the right bracket key and bring it all the way to the top.

And then I want to clip its color match layer to the layers below, which is actually going to be clipped to the subject press control alt g on windows or command option G on Mac. And then I want to blur all the details in this color match layer.

So I come up here to filter, blur, Gaussian blur. Now I’m going to bring up the Gaussian blur enough that I see the details blurring or just something like that and say, OK, and I’m going to change my blend mode to color.

And then I’m going to drop the opacity all the way down and then bring it up to where it looks natural because all the light behind her and bouncing off everything in the room should take on this color in the background.

And I think I want to remove this clipping mask because I have some other objects here that I composited in. And I want that light to bounce off them, too, so we can come here and release clipping Mask.

I want to transform this layer, Command + T and I want to bring the color of this background layer down further. And you can adjust your opacity to make it look. Are you like there’s before and there’s. That’s a quick and easy way to match your subject to the background.

How to Match a Subject to the Background Using Curves Adjustment Layer

So now let’s use another method to do color matching. We’re going to use curves just like we did in the first example. Create a curves, adjustment layer, and we’re going to select the adjustment, not the layer mask, I’m going to hit alt or option and click on auto and we’re going to use find dark and light colors, but we’re not going to snap neutral mid tones.

Now we’re not trying to neutralize the image this time. We actually want to introduce a color cast onto the subject, which is the magenta is in the background. So now this time, we’re going to apply the shadows from the background and highlights from the background.

And this is going to introduce the color cast onto the subject in that color cast should look similar on the subject and make the composite look more realistic when you click on the shadows right here and I’m going to use the eyedropper and sample down here shadow and say, OK, and click on the highlights and find an area over

here and looks like a good area and say, OK, and it’s going ask me, save the new target colors as default and going to say no. And you had the option to make a creative choice to cut back on some of this color cast and you can drop your opacity just a little bit and see how much you

like it. I choose about 70. There’s before there’s the after. I think that’s a good compromise using the opacity. And again, if I click on the adjustment, you could see the RGB channels, what Photoshop has done. And of course, if you need to make more adjustments, you can click on this hand here and you can drag down

to make more contrast a bit more in the shadows. Something like that. There’s before and there’s the after. Add a little bit more highlights. So now our subject is blended in more to the background.

See my photography website here 👉 https://www.charlescabreraphotography.com

Read the previous blog article here 👉 How to Easily Create a Cinemagraph in Photoshop and Premiere Pro