Ready to curve your first image? This before and after example is the kind of improvement you can expect after the Color Wizard guides you through your first image.

Notice that the colors are more saturated, and the detail in the stone walls stands out more.

In this example, you'll see exactly how you can do this , using the color wizard, and become more familiar with the important concepts for color correcting an image: shadow, highlight, neutral, and overall brigthness.

Although you may simply read this tutorial, your time will be better spent if you copy the original image to your hard drive, and follow the example in Photoshop. This goes for all of the examples.

2

If necessary, open the Color Wizard's introductory screen by clicking on the wizard's magic wand button..

Click the Next button.

3

When the wizard asks you to select an initial color space, click on Lab.

Although I generally start with Lab, this is not particularly important because you will be comparing the results in the various color spaces at the end of this process.

Click the Next button.

4

The wizard will ask you to click on the approximate location of the blackest point in the image. This is called the shadow point.

In this case, the little door at the base of the tower on the right side of the image is the darkest.

Click the Next button.

5

Fine tune the position of the shadow point, to avoid solid black areas in parts of the image you care about.

Drag the shadow point around to "break up" any large areas of pure black. The final result will look like black bits of pepper on a dark gray background.

Click the Next button.

6

The wizard will ask you to click on the highlight. This should be brightest white object that contains important detail.

In this case, the reflection in the water is the proper highlight.

Click the Next button.

Note: You may have noticed that the sky turns pure white. The sky would be important in this picture, if it contained any detail. This time, it doesn't, so we leave it a pure white.

7

The wizard asks you to click on a medium gray object.

This is a crucial step. Many people would probably pick the stone buildings, but these are actually made of Bath stone, a honey-colored stone local to the region of Bath. Try it, you won't like it.

We pick the slate roofing tile as a neutral gray, hunting around for a particularly blue section of roof. In this case I decided to pick the side of a slate covered "penthouse" near the right edge of the image.

Click the Next button.

8

In this step the wizard presents you with a slider with which you may adjust overall image brightness.

Not much needs to be changed here, though I did elect to brighten things up slightly.

Click the Next button

9

Now use the color space buttons to compare the color spaces with one another. Adjust the brightness for each color space separately. My results are summarized on the right. Compare them with your own results.

I think the winners are RGB and Wg-CMYK.

Once you start to use curves outside of the wizard, the Lab color space has additional capabilities that can be brought to bear on this image, and they will be discussed in a later example.