Selective Color. Color Correction in Photoshop

How the Selective Color tool works. Note that we can access this tool in two ways. The first is through Adjustments, either here or here. You can also access Selective Color through Image Adjustments. There is also Selective Color here. This is the same tool, but if you work through Image, all changes will be applied directly to our photo. If we work through an Adjustment Layer through Adjustments, we have the ability to work with How this tool is structured. At the top, where the colors are, we need to choose which color group we will work with. Note, not with a color, but specifically with a color group. What does this mean? If we choose the red color group, we will work not with red, but everything that can be called red. The red color group includes light red, dark red, saturated red, unsaturated red, red-orange or red-pink, but everything we can call red. The first thing when working with this tool is to choose which group you will work with. There are six main color groups here. Red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta. And separately, there are three light groups. What are light groups? When we work with whites, it's working with highlights. But not every photo has highlights. Here they are on the skin and possibly where the whites are. Flowers. If we choose the black group, we will work with black. Where we have black hair, what is very dark in the photo. If we work in neutral, we will work in the so-called light areas and mid-tones. Things that are dark in the photo, but not very dark. Great. Now for practice, we can choose a group. Let's choose the red group. And here we have four main sliders. We can move the sliders to the right or to the left. If we move the sliders to the right, for example, the topmost slider, which is called cyan, to the right, then in the red group, everything we call red will have cyan added. Note, it's very important to understand that this tool does not change one color into another. It doesn't mean that if I move cyan in the red group, red will become cyan. No. This tool mixes colors. When one color is mixed with another, a third color is obtained. If I move the magenta slider to the right in red, it means magenta will be added to red. To understand how colors mix precisely, you need to study the color mixing table. The color mixing table looks like this. We have the RGB color wheel. Note, there are many types of color wheels on the internet. You should be interested in the RGB color wheel specifically. When red is mixed with green, yellow is obtained. When green is mixed with blue, cyan is obtained. When blue is mixed with red, magenta is obtained. Not pink, but specifically magenta, and so on. You also need to learn what happens when you mix opposite colors. When opposite colors are mixed, the color saturation decreases. If I move the yellow slider to the right in red, then yellow will be added to everything that is red in the photo. When red is mixed with yellow, orange is obtained. Also, at the very bottom, there is a slider that is responsible not for color but for light. When this slider is moved to the right, black will be added to our red, meaning our red will darken. When this slider is moved to the left, white will be added to our red, and thus the red in the photo will lighten. If I move these sliders not to the right but to the left, the opposites of these colors will be added. And in the new version of Photoshop, the design has been updated, and you can visually understand which color will be added. If I stand in the red group and move the cyan slider to the left, then red will be added to red. If I stand in red and move the yellow slider to the left, blue will be added to the red. Great. And you can choose any of the groups and add light to that group to control the light across the entire photo. A couple of examples, for instance, we have these flowers in the photo and you want to change their color. The first thing you need to do is determine which color group they belong to. By color, it's pink, but there's no pink color group in Photoshop. The pink color group is either the red group or the magenta group, depending on the shade of pink. In this case, the red will be responsible for these flowers. If I work in the red group, these flowers will change. I can add yellow or I can add blue. I can darken them, I can lighten them. But why does the whole photo change? Because there's a lot of the red group in this photo. Notice, there's no pure red here, but the red group includes the model's skin, the pink flowers, even the beige flowers, and even the dark hair. The hair is dark, they are in the black group, but at the same time, they are also in the red group. If you want to work with colors, you can change the color of these flowers and then apply this effect only to the flowers using a mask. Great, now you know how this tool works.