How to Remove a Yellow Tint in GIMP

Old film or improper white balance can cause a yellow tint in photos. GIMP's Hue and Saturation tool enables you to increase or reduce specific primary and complementary colors from an image or part of an image. Hue refers to a color's position on the color wheel, while saturation makes a color appear brighter or duller. Since yellow is a primary color, removing a yellow tint involves relatively few adjustments. You need only to lower yellow's saturation value, as adjusting the other parameters can cause pixelation and other strange effects.

  1. 1.

    Click “File” and choose “Open” to open the image in GIMP. By default, GIMP adjusts the picture's magnification to fit your monitor, but you can zoom in or out by clicking the “Magnification” menu and choosing a percentage, such as 100 percent or 75 percent.

  2. 2.

    Click “Colors” and select “Hue-Saturation.” The Hue and Saturation window opens, displaying controls for the picture's red, green, blue, cyan, magenta and yellow values.

  3. 3.

    Select “Yellow” from the color wheel. Drag the “Saturation” slider to the left to reduce the amount of yellow in the image. The yellow tint is reduced, but the effect may be uneven.

  4. 4.

    Drag the “Overlap” slider to the right until the picture looks natural and even. The Overlap option controls the colors adjacent to yellow on the color wheel, namely green and red. Instead of a sharp cutoff from green to yellow to red, the curve becomes gentle when you increase the overlap.