How to remove colour casts using Adobe Camera Raw

Here we show you how to quickly correct the white balance of your Raw files using the tools in Elements’ Camera Raw editor.

Different light sources have different colour temperatures: simply put daylight is cool and blue, and indoor light is a warm yellow/orange.

Your DSLR’s white balance settings are designed to compensate for different colour temperatures, so that whites appear white and other colours are captured faithfully, and most of the time it will do a good job; but if the Auto WB setting is fooled by difficult lighting, or if you select the wrong white balance preset, your shots can exhibit an unsightly tint or colour cast.

If you shoot Raw files it’s easy to correct the white balance of your images post-shoot, using the White Balance tools in Photoshop Elements’ Camera Raw editor.

The White Balance menu effectively enables you to choose a different white balance for a shot post-shoot, with presets that correspond to those on your camera, such as Daylight, Cloudy and Tungsten.

You can also click on a tone in an image that should be white or light grey with the White Balance tool, and Adobe Camera Raw will neutralise any colour cast in those tones, and adjust colours throughout the image accordingly.

Finally, you can use the Temperature and Tint sliders to adjust the blue-yellow and green-magenta balance of a shot respectively. Let’s take a closer look…

SEE MORE: Colour Theory – the best colour combinations for photography (and how to take it further)

Fix a shot’s white balance in Adobe Camera Raw

01 White Balance menu
Download the sample image from and open it in ACR. Our subject’s skin tones look a bit too orange, so we’ll need to cool down the shot’s colour temperature for more natural-looking colours. Start by clicking through the presets in the White Balance menu; one of these will usually get you close to where you want to be, and in this case Auto does a nice job of reducing the orange tint.

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02 Warm it up
The Auto preset drops the colour temperature from 5200 to a cooler 3650 degrees Kelvin. The skin tones now look more natural, but the colours overall feel a little too cool for the sunny autumnal scene. We can fine-tune the colours by moving the Temperature slider right, to a slightly warmer 4500: this keeps the skin tones looking good, and enhances the reds and yellows in the background foliage.

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03 White Balance tool
Hold down the Alt key and click the Reset button to undo your adjustments and restore the shot to its original, rather warm, white balance. Next we’ll try the White Balance tool. If you have tones in your image that you know should be white or light grey, this tool enables you to accurately set the white balance by clicking on those colours – you can click on a white balance card if you’ve used one.

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04 One-click fix
For portrait shots the whites of the eyes provide a reliable target for the White Balance tool (the tool won’t work on pure white clipped highlights, as they don’t contain any colour information). Click on one of the subject’s eyes to make them white – as when you select a preset from the White Balance menu, all the colours in the image will be adjusted. Click Done to update the Raw settings and close the image.

SEE MORE: Photoshop Adjustment Brush – how to make quick, localised tweaks

Quick tip
You can use the Temperature slider to fine-tune the balance of shots taken in sunlight or under tungsten lighting. The tint slider is designed for shots taken under fluorescent and other non-tungsten artificial light sources, which can often exhibit a magenta or green cast.

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