Correcting Colors by Setting Black and White Points

If an image has a color cast, an effective way to correct it is to select those points that you know are supposed to be black or white and shift all colors based on resetting these points to true black and true white. You can do this with the Black and White Points command. You can also define the grey point too. After you select the points, all colors are shifted.

Important: To apply this command to a selection, the image must be a 16 million (24-bit) color image (otherwise the command is applied to the entire image). To increase the color depth of an image, see Increasing the Color Depth of an Image.

To use the Black and White Points command:

To limit the correction to a specific area, make a selection in the image. See Using the Selection Tools.
Choose Adjust > Color Balance > Black and White Points.
In the right preview window, center the area with the source points (the points that should be black, white, or grey). Pan the image by clicking and dragging in the preview window; zoom in or out as necessary.

Note: You must use the right preview window for panning the image because you select the source colors in the left preview window.

To use a greyscale palette to select all destination colors, mark the Balance to grey check box. If this check box is cleared, you can select any color for the destination points.
For each point that you want to correct, do the following:
Select the source point: click the color’s dropper button , then click a color in the left preview window that is supposed to be the color you are correcting (black, grey, or white).
If you want, change the default color: for the Desired color boxes, click the appropriate Color box (black, grey, or white) and select a color from a black-and-white color palette.

Note: To select a destination color from the image window or the desktop, position the cursor over any destination color box, press and hold the Ctrl key, move the cursor over the image or the desktop, and click a color.

To preserve the lightness of the source color, mark the Preserve lightness check box. If this check box is cleared, the lightness of the corrected image matches the target color’s lightness instead.
Click OK.

Correcting Colors by Setting Black and White Points

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