Color Balance Adjuster

Adjust color balance between cyan-red, magenta-green, and yellow-blue channels.

Tested tool guide Tested browser tools Checked August 16, 2026

What Color Balance Adjuster does and how it behaves

This tool applies the classic three-slider color balance model to an image: one slider runs from cyan to red, one from magenta to green, one from yellow to blue, and each is a single control on an opponent pair rather than two separate adjustments. Moving a slider adds to one color channel while pulling away from its complement, and the preview updates as you drag. What surprises people most is channel clipping: pixels already near pure white or pure black have little or no headroom left in a channel, so a strong slider push can visibly warm the midtones while leaving blown highlights or crushed shadows almost untouched.

How the result is produced

Opponent-color slider pairs

Each slider is one axis of the standard photographic color balance model, not two independent controls: the cyan-red slider maps to the red channel, magenta-green to the green channel, and yellow-blue to the blue channel, since cyan, magenta and yellow are the complements of red, green and blue in the RGB model. Pushing toward one end raises that channel and effectively lowers its opposite.

Bounded channel math

Because each color channel is stored with a fixed minimum and maximum, a slider offset cannot push a channel below its floor or above its ceiling. Areas of the image that are already near pure black or pure white in a given channel show little visible shift from that slider, even when midtones with more headroom change noticeably at the same slider setting.

Good uses

Correcting a photo with an unwanted color cast, such as an indoor shot that reads too blue or too green, by nudging the matching slider toward its opposite pole.
Deliberately warming or cooling an image's tone for a stylistic look, like pushing toward red and yellow for a sunset feel, without touching separate brightness or contrast controls.
Eyeballing a match between two photos meant to sit side by side, adjusting one image's channels until its color cast looks consistent with the other.

Limits and checks

The tool's own description covers only the three sliders, not separate shadow/midtone/highlight ranges, so it's uncertain whether a cast confined to just the shadows can be corrected without also shifting the midtones and highlights.
Slider pushes can clip: pixels already near a channel's minimum or maximum barely move, so a strong correction can look inconsistent across an image with both deep shadows and bright highlights.
There's no calibrated readout tying a slider position to a measured color temperature or Kelvin value, so the result is an eyeballed correction that won't reproduce identically across different images, monitors, or viewing conditions.

Common questions

Will adjusting the sliders change my image's brightness?

It can, as a side effect. Because each slider raises one color channel while lowering its complement, a strong push toward red or yellow can make the image read slightly brighter or darker even though there's no dedicated brightness control. Compare the result to the original rather than assuming only hue moved.

Can I limit the adjustment to just shadows or highlights, like Photoshop's Color Balance tool?

That's not confirmed by what's described here - the interface exposes three sliders (cyan-red, magenta-green, yellow-blue) without a stated shadows/midtones/highlights selector, so plan on the adjustment applying across the whole image rather than a targeted tonal range unless the tool itself shows otherwise.

References and verification

The behavioral notes were checked against the browser implementation. Standards and primary references below define the relevant format, formula, or platform behavior.