Colour correction for your property photos

You always want to shoot properties with the lights on. So, flip the switch on every possible bulb as soon as you arrive because some take a while to warm up. The problem is that in some light, particularly tungsten (the older non energy saving bulbs) your shots can come out looking like you’ve attached a yellow filter to the lens. Not ideal. You need colour correction.

Camera settings and white balance

Any decent camera will have the option to adjust the white balance for shooting in different light conditions. But here’s the thing – it takes time to switch between the various modes e.g. tungsten, fluorescent etc.

It’s also easy to forget you changed the white balance setting and you risk taking loads of shots on the wrong setting. Keep things easy for yourself and leave the white balance setting on automatic. Here’s a handy article with some tips on fine-tuning your camera settings for stunning property photos.

Colour correction by tinkering in Photoshop

This is your best option for correcting those troublesome shots where the colours are just plain wrong! You can do it yourself in Adobe Lightroom using the temperature setting or we can do it for you. This is an essential edit we do as standard on any shots you send us.

The trick is to play around with the temperature slider to make the shot ‘warmer’ or ‘cooler’ than your camera’s sensor would have you believe. Before your very eyes the image will shed it’s unwanted yellow or blue veneer and be back to how us humans see things.

The worst offenders

Rooms with tungsten bulbs that give off a yellow light are the worst. Also, rooms with an excess of yellow, cream or beige decor often try their hardest to impose their yellow stain into your image file.

Another one is small bathrooms with low levels of natural light and halogen bulbs. These can look dark, dingy and like you have smeared a thin coating of marmite over your lens in preparation for your shoot.

Before and afters with colour correction

Sometimes you just never know when the white balance and colours will take on a mind of their own and decide they don’t want to play nice with your camera sensor. Here are a few shots showing what I mean…

Need help correcting colour in your images?

Should you need a little help to maximise the wow factor of your property shots, that’s what we’re here for! We expertly enhance the photos you take using Photoshop and correct dodgy white balance as standard on all images as well as doing several other essential edits.

We’d love you to check out our Image Enhancement service for FREE so here’s a promocode for you, enter BLOG22 when creating an account 🙂