Using the Color Balance Tool

When my wife and I drove from our home in Germany to the Brittany coast of France to visit the great sea cliffs of Etretat in 1971, I had Monet’s famous Impressionist painting of the same name in mind.

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The day was a drab one, wintry and blowing, but the salt laden air was mysterious with the glint from the storm wracked sky reflecting on the leaden waves and alabaster cliff faces. Maybe due to the limitations of my slide film, and maybe due to the passage of time, I never felt my pictures captured my intentions that day.

Enter Photoshop CS3.

In addition to the controls discussed in the post below, I also used the Color Balance feature (Image>Adjustments) to bring out the magenta tones in the highlights of the alabaster cliffs and the reflections of the evening sky on the waves, along with the cropping tool to strengthen the diagonal line of perspective, getting the result shown next.

And now look what the brightness control does: