Primary Color Correction: Color Control Primer - The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction - page 85

secondary color correction to fix something that you “broke” in the
original.
Another interesting shape to notice is the zig-zag Z shape in the wave-
form monitor to the left side, in the middle (vertically) of the RGB Parade.
This shape is the weathered, copper-colored lion. You don't want this
Z shape to match across the three color channels in the RGB Parade,
because the lion is blue-green in color, so that Z shape should definitely
be higher in the green and blue channels than it is in the red channel.
Here's where I ended up ( Figure 3.16 ). This is the cool Art Institute
shot corrected. The sky is an odd yellowish color because of the clipping
in the original image, but this can be fixed with a secondary color correc-
tion that isolates that portion of the image or by reducing the saturation
in the highlights.
Figure 3.17 is the RGB Parade that corresponds to the corrected Art
Institute shot. The red, green, and blue channels are not balanced in the
midtones and highlights because I wanted to keep some of the warmth of
the sandstone façade.
Something else to note is that when we made the gain adjustments to
the reds and blues, the shadows or lift was also affected. The shadows of
the reds got higher and the shadows of the blues went a little lower. So
take a moment to get the shadows balanced again.
A color correction is often done to get most of the image looking
good, even if it means that it takes another color correction to fix
something that you “broke” in the original.
Fig. 3.16