Nothing is more annoying to me than a color cast in the blue range all over my photos. It makes body parts look alien and everything else looks al gloomy and depressing. For me an auto white balance usually triggers a blue cast. Auto WB never worked for me, it just doesn’t. No matter how expensive the camera I’m shooting with. So I prefer eyeballing the light and manually adjusting the Kelvin Temperature or using my ExpoDisk.

Now don’t get me wrong, a blue color cast can actually add a certain mood to photos, but when it comes to food photography it never ever adds. Here’s a really simple way to get rid of it.

Blue Cast Be Gone:

Here’s my SOOC. I was baking a bread ring bread topped with caramelized onions with balsamic vinegar, cherry tomatoes, mozzarella and basil. See the blue cast among all the yumminess?

We simply have to add some warmth to counteract the coolness. Always do your editing on a separate layer, that way you can still adjust things later on not to mention play with the opacity of whatever it is you’re tweaking.

 
If necessary flatten your image and press CTRL + J (CMD+J on a Mac) to duplicate and name your background. You can adjust the color balance via the layers palette and choose Color Balance from the menu, this will automatically add a new layer. 

But old habits die hard, so I always press CTRL+B (CMD+B on the Mac) on my keyboard to get to the color balance box to pop up. 

Make sure you’re working on the Midtones and have the Preserve Luminosity toggle box checked. Now set the color levels to 18 and –20. Or use the slides. The further you drag the slide into the yellow, the warmer the tone will be. Be careful not to overdo it!

Instantly the blue will be replaced by a warm yellowish tone making the image look far more realistic.

Adjust the opacity of the layer to your liking and you’re done.

You can make this even simpler by downloading this action that I’ve made for you. Keep in mind that it will flatten your layer, so make sure all your other editing is done first!

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