Focal Planet

Digital Colour control filters in PhotoShop

by Tony Parkinson

Colour Control filters have traditionally been used by photographers to correct colour casts given by differing lighting sources. They can be split into 2 categories, colour conversion and light balancing filters. Colour correction filters are the Blue 80 series used to correct the effect of tungsten lighting when used with daylight balanced film and the Orange 85 series used to correct the effect of daylight when using tungsten balanced film. Light balancing filters are the straw coloured 81 series used to compensate for the colder light when the sun is high in the sky and the pale blue 82 series filters used to compensate for the warmer light of the early and late hours as the sun is low in the sky. Let's take a look at how these filters can be simulated in PhotoShop by applying an 81C filter to this image of Swaledale. Then we'll look at how to similarly create other Colour Control filters

1. First, create an empty new layer. (fig.1)

2. Next, change the new layer's blending mode to Overlay. (fig. 2)

3. Double click on the foreground colour and set it to the following values R:136 G:128 B:116 (fig. 3)

4. Now choose Edit -> Fill, set the colour to "Forground Colour" and click OK (fig .4)

And here's our finished image with the 81C filter

Here are the values for the foreground colours to produce other colour control filters :-

Filter	Red Channel	Green Channel	Blue Channel
80A	97	111	179
80B	97	121	163
80C	98	122	161
80D	113	125	143
81A	132	129	121
81B	133	129	119
81C	136	128	116
81D	138	128	115
81E	141	130	111
82A	122	125	133
82B	118	126	138
82C	114	126	141
85B	170	126	85
85C	147	124	110

And here are the images using those curves: -

80A	80B	80C
80D	81A	81B
81C	81D	81E
82A	82B	82C
85B	85C

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