I’ve been doing this Photoshop / restoration / retouching thing a long time now and I can pretty well tell just by looking what type of color correction will work on what type of fading or color cast. Curves work really well on a certain kind of orangey-red cast that’s indicative of 1970’s chain store images while nothing short of a black and white adjustment and a hand tint will work on a particular sun faded yellow cast. I do, however, try more than one method on each image just to be certain I’m getting the best result.
For my 5 Ways I’m going to list the five methods that pop in my head first. They won’t always be the most popular and some might be downright odd, but there are so many ways to do any one thing in Photoshop and, frankly, the best way to do anything is the way that gives you the best result. Always using Curves, for instance, is severely limiting your potential outcome. We’ll start the 5 Ways of Color Correction with the most obvious method:
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