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Correct common photo problems quickly using automatic enhancement tools such as the powerful Auto Smart Tone.

Most people would probably prefer to spend more time taking photographs than editing them. For

this reason Photoshop Elements’ editing modes are crammed full of menu commands that are designed to automatically enhance your shots with the minimum of time and effort on your part. The automatic enhancement commands are designed to overcome common photo problems with a few clicks. For example, some shots will be over- or under-exposed, or simply suffer from flat contrast. Photoshop Elements can quickly analyse the tones (or ‘levels’) in a shot and then attempt to adjust them to create a healthier spread of shadows, mid-tones and highlights. You’re also likely to encounter problems with color. You may have used an inappropriate Picture Style setting in your camera, resulting in drab, unsaturated colors. Your camera’s Auto White Balance (AWB) feature may have failed to get whites looking white in a particular scene, resulting in a photo that suffers from cold (blue) or warm (orange) tints. Fortunately, you can apply an Auto Color Correction command to warm up or cool down shots in an instant, producing more natural-looking colors. Elements’ automatic enhancement commands aren’t magic bullets that will solve any photo’s problems with a click. The Auto Smart Fix command may do a great job of improving flat contrast, but it can also add nasty color casts to the image (such as tinting a white background blue). Fortunately, there’s an Auto Contrast command that will change the image’s tones without creating unwanted shifts in color. Here we’ll look at some of the most useful automatic enhancement commands, including the new and versatile Auto Smart Tone command. For clipping path, background remove, neck joint or image masking service you may not need these types of enhancement.

1.

Improve contrast with Auto Smart Tone

Our start image has flat contrast so it lacks impact. By choosing Enhance>Auto Smart Tone you can preview differently contrasting versions of the shot. You can then manually fine-tune the look of the tones in the image by dragging the cursor towards particular preview thumbnails. Here we’ve brightened the highlights and darkened the shadows. Click OK to apply the changes. The Auto Smart Tone command can also learn your preferences, which enables you to work more quickly in the future. Also please don’t forget to read our old blogs about Clipping Path Service and Different types of Clipping Path.

2.

Avoid unwanted color shifts

Our starting image is over-exposed and lacks strong shadows. You could try using Enhance>Auto Levels to create stronger shadows and increase the mid-tone contrast, but this will make the building’s yellow paintwork look a little green. By choosing Enhance>Auto Contrast you can make the shadows look darker and the highlights brighter without adding unwanted shifts in color. If the automatic commands fail to do a good job you can adjust the tones manually, as we’ll demonstrate in the future blogs.

3.

Correct color casts

Our starting image looks a little too cold, due to a slight blue color cast. Choose Enhance>Auto Color Correction, and Photoshop Elements will analyse the whites in the shot. They suffer from a slight blue tint so it warms them up to make the whites appear a neutral white. This warms up the colors in the rest of the image, which brings out the oranges in the building’s brickwork. This automatic command won’t work on every problematic picture, so we’ll show you how to correct color casts manually in the upcoming blogs.

Till then, keep photoshoping 🙂