Step-by-step

Remove colour casts

1 Import photo

Go to File>import. Browse to our supplied Whitebalance_start.nef file. This is a camera raw file with more colour/tonal information to work with. Click ‘Review for import’.

2 Go to Edit

Double-click on the imported photo’s thumbnail to make it fill the workspace. You can then click the ‘Edit’ button to access the Photos app’s suite of digital darkroom tools.

3 Adjust cast

Toggle open the Colour panel and its extra options. By dragging the Casts slider to the right you can warm up the entire photo. However the shadows still look cold/blue.

4 White Balance tool

Choose Edit>revert to Original so that you can try a different approach. Toggle open the White Balance panel. Set the dropdown to Neutral Grey. Click on the eyedropper icon.

5 Take a sample

Move the eyedropper into shadows. Click to sample a cold blue area. It will detect the blue pixels and warm them up to remove the colour cast and create a warmer scene.

6 Fine-tune the look

The shadows have lost their cold blue cast and the sunlit bridge has a warmer glow. If the bridge looks too warm you can dial down the WB adjustment by dragging Warmth left.

7 Alternative techniques

For more control of your adjustments set the dropdown to Temperature/tint. This resets the shot to its original colours. Then warm up the shot using the degrees Kelvin scale.

8 Tackle tints

Sometimes a corrected colour cast can display a green or magenta tint. Drag the Tint slider right to remove green tints. Drag the slider left to reduce the presence of magenta.

9 Finishing touch

In the end we decided the eyedropper technique covered in Step 5 produced the best results for this shot. We boosted the saturation by 0.25 to create a more attractive image.