About making adjustments onscreen

Human eyes perceive color subjectively. It’s difficult to make objective changes to the colors in an image because the brain is so advanced that it skews the perception of colors to make them appear as natural as possible. For this reason, it’s essential that you create the best possible work environment for performing color adjustments. Such an environment excludes extraneous colors that have the potential to throw off your eye.

Before you begin making color adjustments to your images, it’s important to do the following:

• Set your display to its highest-resolution setting. This will give you the best view of your image.

• Practice good color management by calibrating your displays and printers and making sure their profiles are up to date.

• Reduce the ambient light in the room you’re working in to prevent the light from skewing your perception of the colors on your screens, and set your displays to their brightest levels.

• If possible, paint the walls in the room in which you perform detailed image adjustments a neutral gray. Keep bright-colored objects to a minimum to ensure that the colors on your screens are not altered by the color in the rest of the room.