Hue Adjustment for Color Correction

By Anthony Celeste, published on February 5, 2009
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: , , | Themes: Digital Cameras

5. Hue Adjustment for Color Correction

The Hue Slider in the Hue/Saturation/Lightness control is another powerful tool for correcting color. One of the many interesting things about the Hue Slider is that it only affects the color portions of an image. The parts of your photo that contain black, white, and gray will be completely unaffected by the Hue Slider, making it ideal for adjusting certain images. 

In the image below, the trees aren’t in the best of shape, as many of them show yellow leaves. Regardless of whether this problem really comes from unhealthy foliage or your camera not picking up the colors correctly, the yellow leaves are easy to fix with the Hue Slider. 

An adjustment to the Hue Slider changes the yellow leaves to the green hue that you’d expect to see. 

Since the Hue Slider only affects color, it didn’t make any changes to the grayscale waterfall in the background, making the Hue Slider the perfect color-correction tool for this photo.

In both the before and after photos, the leaves looked a bit blurred. Often, adjusting contrast can resolve blur issues, but in this case, contrast didn’t help enough, so the Sharpen tool was needed. Adding a mild amount of sharpening makes it easier to see the individual leaves. 

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Comments

aevm 02/05/2009 8:34 PM
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Loved the article. Thanks guys!

superhighperf 02/06/2009 12:38 PM
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how about fixing the photo that was in the cover?
http://media.bestofmicro.com/adjus [...] 8852-2.jpg

bait and switch article ?!?!?!?!

Anonymous 02/06/2009 5:38 AM
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Damn... You didn't fix the photos, you actually RUINED mosto of them...

Anonymous 02/06/2009 3:38 PM
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As a professional VFX artist, I have to say that this article is a little on the juvenile side. Some of the "after" photos contain less information than the "before" photos. You never want to clip information in your photograph, and always want even exposure. Never underestimate a good matte for affecting only certain portions of your image. Furthermore, a good levels adjustment never hurt, and can always add some "punch" to your image.

Curnel_D 02/06/2009 6:27 PM
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explosiveg :
As a professional VFX artist, I have to say that this article is a little on the juvenile side. Some of the "after" photos contain less information than the "before" photos. You never want to clip information in your photograph, and always want even exposure. Never underestimate a good matte for affecting only certain portions of your image. Furthermore, a good levels adjustment never hurt, and can always add some "punch" to your image.


I dont think this article was written for the professional VFX artist. It was written for the average consumer who barely knows how to take and edit pictures, let alone correctly. A mix of both worlds.

Anonymous 02/06/2009 7:20 PM
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The article text provides a reasonable introduction to basic photo editing, but the "fixed" photos are perfect examples of what happens when a beginner goes way, way overboard. It's too bad because the miserable "after" photos significantly undermine the credibility of the article.

mediv42 02/06/2009 11:56 PM
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Why do people insist a bluer sky or greener trees make a better picture? Isn't the point of photography to capture what actually is, not whimsically change it to what you want it to be? Sure I understand if you underexposed the photo, or your white balance is off or whatever, but shouldn't the goal generally be what the subject actually looked like?

cruiseoveride 02/08/2009 7:09 AM
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good stuff. Now to see if this works in gimp.

idisarmu 02/08/2009 5:17 PM
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This reminds me of the millions upon millions of teenage girls who see a picture of themselves and say, "Oh noes!!! ACNE!" *cries for hours and then suddenly has epiphany* "WAIT! I've GOT IT! I'll just crank up the brightness and make the picture black&white! THANK YOU COMPUTER!"

idisarmu 02/08/2009 5:57 PM
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It's a shame that the raccoon now looks like it is hovering.

AARRGGHHH 02/09/2009 7:41 AM
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idisarmu :
This reminds me of the millions upon millions of teenage girls who see a picture of themselves and say, "Oh noes!!! ACNE!" *cries for hours and then suddenly has epiphany* "WAIT! I've GOT IT! I'll just crank up the brightness and make the picture black&white! THANK YOU COMPUTER!"



Black and White hides zits? That IS an epiphany.

I enjoyed the article.

Anonymous 02/10/2009 9:49 AM
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I can't help but agree with most guys... the raccoon looks like it's hovering, the sea looks like mouth wash, the waterfall trees look like plastic, and the desert highway looks boring and cold.
Anyone that has actually been in a tropical island will tell you that the waters ARE emerald green, and there's no hint of pollution. Also, clouds at sunset tend to be yellow, then orange, then even purple! Turn them all white, why don't you!
On the other hand... if you keep giving people such advice that will make all photographs boring and amateurish, that will really deify us photographers...

sbuckler 02/10/2009 6:39 PM
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picasa ftw
It's free, very easy to use and works very well for the sort of basic image editing you covered above. Not that it completely removes the need for photo impact. I got the originals of some professionally taken family photo's that were blury - needed the full power of the more advanced PI sharpening tool to sort that out. Then used picasa to fix colour, contrast and it's diffuse glow tool to get the right effect. Wife was so impressed she had me get a 24 inch print of one of the pictures :)

anny 03/17/2009 10:11 AM
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thanks for your sharing !very nice !

TJ_the_first 04/08/2009 3:38 AM
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I like to think that the overuse of effects was to really highlight what each one does. Subtle is better for real use but for theory you want the effects to show. As a complete beginner to this stuff it's good to get a basic intro to some features that would scare most happy snappers. Good article.

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