How to Adjust Color Images With iPhoto

Original

iPhoto is an image editing and management application that is part of the iLife Suite of products included with the Apple OS-X operating system. Although it is an application targeted at novices, it does contain some color editing tools allowing the user to correct for color exposure and temperature. The original pictured above, is too dark as you can see, and not at the correct color temperature. Follow the steps in this article to learn how to perform basic color corrections using iPhoto.

Things You'll Need

• Apple Macintosh running OS-X operating system.
• Apple iLife Suite

Instructions

1. 

   Open iPhoto and select your image from the organizer under a particular album or event or from the All Photos tab. Double-click on the photo to begin working on the image. Click your mouse on the "arrows" button, which will bring up the floating editing toolbar.

2. 

   Move your mouse to the bottom of the image to display the editing bar. From the editing bar select ADJUST to open up the ADJUSTMENTS PANEL. Notice there are a number of adjustments that can be made to the image. You can adjust saturation, highlights, shadows, contrast and many more image qualities by simply moving the sliders.

3. 

   Since this image is too dark, I will first move the slider to adjust the exposure. This corrects 90 percent of the image problems. It was shot at a night game at 1600 ISO, and although the lights may seem bright at the game, they are really not. Shooting at a shutter speed of /1250th of a second freezes the action, but even with the lens wide open, the image is till underexposed.

4. 

   Adjust the color temperature. Since the game was shot at night under lights and the camera was set at AUTO WHITE BALANCE, it only needs a slight color temperature adjustment. This adjustment makes the colors truer to the actual scene. If you shot indoors without a flash you would use this to adjust the color and make it more lifelike.

5. 

   Improve the sharpness of the image with the sharpness adjustment. Compare this image to the previous one by comparing the lettering on the uniform. I set the sharpness to maximum to make the comparison easier. If the image has some artifacts from a high ISO setting or low light levels, you can reduce them by using the REDUCE NOISE slider.

6. 

   This is the final image, which is much better than the original. It is important to remember to save the image under a different name so you do not apply the settings to the original. Always make a copy of the image before you start and edit the copy. iPhoto will make changes automatically to the image you are editing when you are finished. That way you are assured to preserve the original, so you can always start with the original if you want to make further edits.

Tips & Warnings

• Experiment with all the sliders and controls to get familiar with the capabilities of iPhoto.

• Always work with image copies to preserve the integrity of your image archive.

Resources

• Apple Computers