How to do one-click color balance to an RGB value

[BestVisuals]

I'm evaluating PaintShop Pro X3, and comparing it to my copy of PhotoImpact 10. PI 10 had a marvelous feature - "Smart" color balance, where you could click on a spot in a photo and PI would shift the entire image's color balance to match the desired color. I use this feature on 99% of the images I edit, and need to find the equivalent feature in PSP X3 if it exists. It's a make-or-break purchase decision for me.

I've read the Help, called Tech Support twice and the closest they can get me to is the Color Changer. It does EXACTLY what I want - shift one color to another - but it does not work on the entire photo, only like colors of the original.

Tell me Corel did not get rid of the Smart Color balance when they bought PhotoImpact...I found the Color Balance window in PSP, but it only shifts the color balance in terms of tint (cool, warm), NOT to a RGB value.

Please oh please tell me where I can make a one-click color balance shift like I'm describing in PSP...thanks!

[LeviFiction]

Okay, technically Corel did and did not get rid of ColorBalance when they ought out the company and got PhotoImpact. They got rid of PhotoImpact. It's different. PSP has been around a long time by comparison and they didn't add the feature to it.

I don't think you'll find a one click solution. Though I can't imagine it being a difficult thing to simulate. Not having PhotoImpact on my computer I can't say for sure if there is an equivalent or not somewhere. Do you have a link to a tutorial or something showing the exact feature you're talking about? The Manual Color Correction tool (found in the unused commands in the customize dialog) might have something similar but I can't say that for sure.

The current "Color Balance" is a more advanced version of the "automatic Color Balance" command that PSP had. There is an older color balance command that you can see if you use a Color Balance adjustment layer. It also doesn't have a one click solution.

If we knew how it worked a script might be configured to utilize one of the current commands to simulate the option.

[wds937]

There are several tools in PSP that partially do what you want, such as Color Balance, Red/Green/Blue, the Color Changer Tool, and the Hue Map; however, all have their limitations, and none is very "smart" or automatic. However, all is not lost.

PSP has a feature called Manual Color Correction (refer to LeviFiction's comment above), but recent versions of PSP have removed the command from the menus. You can use the Customize selection on the View menu to move Manual Color Correction from Unused Commands, perhaps to the Adjust menu.

While the Manual Color Correction feature does not seem to be quite as "smart" as the Smart tab of PhotoImpact's Color Balance dialog, it does come close. Both require a similar number of clicks.

On the Manual Color Correction dialog in PSP, hover the mouse over the image and use the resulting color picker to select the Source color. Then pick the Target color from one of the presets, by setting the HSL values, or by right-clicking the color picker on the image. (These are comparable to the Current color and Desired color selections on PhotoImpact's color balance dialog.) Click OK when you have made your selections.

Refer to this example (done in PSP 8 ):

[BestVisuals]

Thanks, everyone, for the replies...any more would also be appreciated.

As mentioned, PSP X3 has a color balance tool, but unlike PhotoImpact, it works on a tint rather than an explicit RGB value. The benefit of a RGB value rather than a tint is that an RGB value is absolute, it doesn't depend upon a calibrated screen or my own eyes making a guess. What I used this feature for white balancing; it was a quick way to make sure tablecloths and dress shirts were white. I could also take a reference photo of a bride's dress next to a calibrated grey card. I would then balance for the grey card, and use an eyedropper to get the true color of the bridal dress. In other photos with the dress, I can then force a consistent dress color by using Smart Color Balance. Nifty, fast, useful feature.

[wds937]

If you're looking to do white balance or neutral gray type things, PSP has two other tools (both of them are also in Unused Commands) that may prove useful. One is Black White Points, which lets you pick black, white, and gray points in the picture. The other is Grey World Color Balance, but it is based on color temperature, rather than specific color values.

You may also want to experiment with the settings in the Color Balance portion of Smart Photo Fix (you must have the Advanced Options box checked). With that feature enabled, you can pick black, white, and gray points in the Before preview panel.

[Tim Morrison]

I'd second wds937's suggestion to use the Black and White Points tool from Unused Commands. As well as being able to set black, white and grey points, you can change the colours of the targets so that a click with the dropper changes to that colour rather just a neutral grey.

[df]

You guys may want to explain how to get to use an unused command.

[LeviFiction]

Sure.

Go to the View menu and select the Customize option from the bottom.

In this dialog, under the Commands tab, find the listing for "Unused commands" on the left. On the right you'll see a list of commands, tools, and filters no longer used in PSP and their icons. You can click on and drag any of these commands into toolbars or menus. Just drag them over the menu or toolbar and drop them in. With menus you will have to hover over the menu you want and when the menu opens drop it under or above any command you want to for organizational purposes.

Under the toolbars tab you can also make your own toolbar to add to the interface designed with the tools you want and use the most often.

Also under the Keyboard tab you can find the commands (again listed under Unused Commands) and attribute a special short-cut key to them. Not to mention changing any short-cut keys you don't like for other commands.

That is one of the fun things about PSP is the amount of customization that's available to you to make the program act in some ways the way you would prefer.

[wds937]

I found some more time to play with this (I guess being temporarily unemployed lends itself to such things); it appears that PSP's Manual Color Correction will probably come close to what you are doing in PI, at least based upon these two tests. I used PSP X3 Ultimate and PI X3 for these tests.

For the first test, I did the white balancing, based upon the brightest spot I could find in the white shirt on the third subject from the left. This area of the picture had RGB values of 241/243/255. I used this for the Current color in PI's Color Balance dialog, and for the Source color in PSP's Manual Color Correction. I used pure, maximum white, RGB values of 255/255/255, for the Desired color in PI and the Target color in PSP.

The results show that PI and PSP produced images that were very close to each other, though not exactly the same. Both appear to be improvements over the original image. Which is better is subjective.

For the second test, I did not have a picture with a calibrated gray square, so I created a dummy by inserting a neutral gray square, with RGB values of 192/192/192, into an existing picture. I created the test picture by skewing the color balance of that picture. In the test picture, the gray square had RGB values of 201/194/137. I used these values for Current color and Source color, in PI and PSP respectively. I used the original neutral gray values of 192/192/192 in the Desired color and Target color.

Neither produced a result that was identical to the original picture, but both were close.