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Have you ever come back full of excitement after photographing
a glorious sunset, only to find the results are slightly underwhelming? It’s happened to me plenty of times. When the last remnants of sunlight are gently kissing the landscape, the sky can light up with a violent blush of reds, oranges and yellows. But here’s the thing, your camera doesn’t see these colours in the same way as your eyes – instead, it assigns them numbers. These vary across different camera brands and models, and your white balance and exposure settings play a part. But the numbers your camera chooses aren’t always right or the best for your image.
This is where Photoshop CC's Camera Raw Calibration panel comes in. With a quick tweak to the Red and Blue Primary sliders, we can enrich the colours in the sunset. The results don’t look over-processed, which often happens when using the Vibrance and Saturation sliders. Of course, these controls aren’t only for sunsets, but for fine-tuning all kinds of images. Whether you want to correct colour casts, create new defaults or make creative colour shifts, the Calibration panel is an overlooked yet powerful tool.
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