Why do my indoor photos look yellow? Is there anything I can do about that?
Photos that have an odd color cast usually look that way because their white balance setting is off. Adobe Photoshop has a few tools you can use to correct weird color casts.
Turning off the flash can often give your photos a pleasing look, but it comes with a side effect. Shooting indoors under incandescent or fluorescent lights can result in photos that have strange, unnatural colors. Think of light as having a “temperature” — our eyes know how to adjust automatically to this temperature, but our cameras are not as smart and are fooled into recording colors incorrectly. Your yellowish indoor photos are said to appear “warm”.
Adjusting Color Temperature with Photoshop Levels
Take a look at the bottom right corner of the Levels box in Photoshop — there are three eyedroppers located there. You can use these droppers to correct an incorrect color cast. I prefer to use either the gray or white eyedropper. Select the gray one and use it to click on an area of your photo that should appear neutral gray, or use the white eyedropper to click on an area that should be white. By doing so, you will give Photoshop a reference point from which it can go about correcting the colors in your photo.
You can access the levels tool by hitting CTRL+L (CMD+L for Mac), or clicking Image → Adjustments → Levels, or Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Levels.
Adjusting Color Temperature with Photoshop’s Photo Filters
Photoshop’s Photo Filter tool is another feature that you can use to adjust the color temperature of a photograph. Select a warming filter for photos that look too blue, or a cooling filter for photos that are too yellow or orange. Adjust the filter density until you are happy with how the colors you see.
I like to use Cooling Filter (82) to work on warm photos. A lot of the time I find that 25% makes my photos too blue — I usually settle on around 10-15%. Of course the density that works for you will depend entirely on the level of warmth in your photo. Again, just experiment with different filters and densities until you are happy with the result.
You can access the Photo Filter tool by clicking Image → Adjustments → Photo Filter…
Adjusting Color Temperature in Adobe Camera RAW
I probably do not have to cover this if you shoot in RAW. But I will. Quickly. Adobe Camera RAW is a great at adjusting white balance, and the latest version works with JPEGs as well. You can use ACR’s auto white balance option as a starting point and then manually tweak until you are happy, or you can use these numbers as starting points: 3000K for indoor photos under incandescent lights, 4000K for indoor photos under fluorescent lights, and 5000K for outdoor photos in daylight.
