In product photography, it’s important that the colors in the picture are true to the actual product. This can be difficult when you’re working with a lot of products.
In this post, we’ll walk you through the Levels adjustment feature in Photoshop that can be used to correct colors caused due to changes in lighting between shots. Depending on the quality of the initial shot, this adjustment can result in a subtle refinement or even a dramatic overhaul (as you’ll witness in this tutorial).
Note: It’s a good idea to try adjusting levels even if you think the image looks fine. Sometimes you’ll find that a good-looking image can in fact be improved with a bit of levels adjusting.
Let’s walk through the basic steps of improving the contrast of an image.Here is an image of a mini Rubik cube shot in dim lighting. As you can see, the white square in the front looks more like a gray.
How to Color Correct a Product Image using Levels
1. Open image and bring up levels
In Photoshop, go to File>Open to open your image. Then go to Image>Adjustments>Levels.
2. Use eyedropper to set black point
On the right of the levels window, you’ll see three eyedropper icons (see green arrow in the image). The rightmost eyedropper has a white tip, the middle (if you look closely) has a grey tip and the one on the left has a black tip.
What do these do? They are used to tell Photoshop which part of the image is white, gray and black. You don’t have to use all of them. If your image has a part of it that you know to be a true black, click on the black eyedropper and then click on the part of the image that is black.
In this sample image, the edges of each square are black – so we click on the black eyedropper and then click anywhere on the black in the image.
This tells Photoshop to correct ALL the other colors in the image accordingly. So with one click on the black, Photoshop attempts to color corrects the entire image based on that one thing you told Photoshop.
3. Use eyedropper to set white point
Similarly, next you’ll set the white point. Click the eyedropper with the white tip, then click on the white square in the image. You’ll see a more of a color change now. The reason is that when you tell Photoshop that the grey square in the image is actually white, Photoshop understands that the entire image is shot in low light and it corrects colors across the entire image.
By using those eyedroppers, you’ve allowed Photoshop to adjust those sliders you see under the histogram. If you like, you can also manually move those sliders around and see how the image changes.
What does the auto button do? If you like, you can also try clicking the Auto button on the far right of the levels window to see if that at least gets you to a good start. Usually, this is not a good practice because Photoshop doesn’t know which areas are actually white/black – with auto, it’s going to guess and color correct based on that guess. So using eyedroppers as mentioned above is the better approach.
4. Save the image
When you’re happy with the image, save the image by going to File>Save.
Here is the final image after using levels for color correction.
When NOT to use levels? Levels works well when your product has black or white somewhere in the image. Levels doesn’t work well when you’re photographing a white or light colored product on a white background – because when you select the white point with the eyedropper, your background will get selected too and it’ll confuse Photoshop. Situations like that need manual color correction using tools like Hue/Saturation or Replace Color, which we will cover in future tutorials.
Have you used levels? How did it work out?
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