STEP BY STEP COLOUR CORRECTION SKILLS

Fix white balance and correct unsightly colour shifts with ease in Affinity Photo

01 SET THE WHITE BALANCE

Open the image into Affinity. If it’s a Raw image use the White Balance controls in the Develop Persona (see box). For JPEGS like this, head to the Layers panel in the Photo Persona. Click the Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom and choose White Balance.

02 CLICK ON A NEUTRAL

Go to the White Balance dialogue and click on ‘Picker’, then click over an area that should be neutral, like the edge of the grey spoon. If it isn’t right, keep clicking over different areas to try to find a neutral spot to sample from, or try tweaking the sliders manually.

03 COLOUR JUDGING TRICK

When adjusting white balance a temporary saturation boost can help you judge things. Highlight the bottom layer, then add an HSL Adjustment Layer. Set Saturation to 100%. Double-click the White Balance layer and tweak the sliders to remove the colour cast.

04 TWEAK HIGHLIGHT COLOUR

Turn off the HSL layer. The highlights look blue, so let’s tweak them with a Colour Balance adjustment. Click the Adjustment Layer icon and pick Colour Balance. Set Tonal Range: Highlights, then drag Cyan/red to the right and Yellow/blue to the left to warm the highlights.

05 ENHANCE THE REDS

Next, we can use a Selective Colour Adjustment Layer to boost the reds. After adding the layer, choose Reds in the colour dropdown then increase Magenta to boost the reds in the spices. Then target Yellows and increase Cyan and Yellow as shown.

06 SELECTIVE CONTRAST BOOSTS

Add a Curves Adjustment Layer and drag an S-shaped curve line as shown to boost contrast. Hold Alt and click the Layer mask icon in the Layers panel to hide the effect. Grab the Brush tool and paint white over the green herbs to reveal the change in contrast.