Using a Curves Adjustment and 50% Gray Layer to Color Correct in Photoshop

Being red/green colorblind, I'm always interested in new, easy to understand, technically precise ways of color balancing as opposed to just eyeballing it. One method that's helped me over the years is to use a color calibration target, like the X-rite ColorChecker Passport. However, for times when I either forget to photograph the color target or else forget to bring it with me, using a 50% gray layer in Photoshop along with a difference blending mode could enable me to achieve reasonably color balanced results without the calibration target. [Sean]

From the PiXimperfect YouTube Channel:

Just ONE-CLICK and All Your Colors Fall into Place! Learn how to automatically perform Color Correction using Curves in Photoshop within seconds! Whether you have a gray area to sample from or not, in this video, we will learn a very essential technique and the concept behind the same to allow Photoshop to figure out automatically the areas that you can sample from for accurate color correction. The video is a bit long (the narrator describes three different ways to create a 50% gray layer and constantly reiterates certain points), but... it's worth watching to fully understand the concept.

In this video, we will dive deep into the concept of "Difference" blend mode and how it can help us to remove unwanted color casts by figuring out the right areas for sampling. I hope this video helps you. Thank you for watching.

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