Keeping the Ocean Blue with Color Thumbnails
Oceans and other bodies of water are commonly seen in photographs, probably because we take so many photos when we’re on vacation. Although we tend to think of the ocean as being blue, a lot of factors, from pollution to reflections to poor color capture in an inexpensive camera, can cause oceans to take on a somewhat green appearance, as seen in the photo below.
Thus far, I’ve avoided using selection masks when demonstrating various adjustments, since the process can become tedious. However, selecting a body of water with your image editor’s magic wand (or similarly named) tool is often a one-step process. Once you’ve selected the body of water, you can use a tool such as PhotoImpact’s Color Balance filter, which provides thumbnail adjustments using shades of red, orange, yellow, green, teal, cyan, blue, and magenta.
Note that this tool is called Color Hue in Photo-Paint and Variations in Photoshop. A click or two on the cyan or blue thumbnails will likely give you a properly tinted blue ocean.
The water in the new image was color corrected by using two clicks of the cyan thumbnail.
