How often have you faced this challenge? You have a disparate selection of images—they may have very little in common in terms of subject matter, color palette, or composition—and it’s your task to create a cohesive and effective layout using all of the images. Proper color editing of webpage images is a step most web designers overlook. Yet ignoring this crucial step can result in a webpage which is unbalanced, misdirecting the viewer’s focus and resulting in an unpleasant (if not confusing) user experience.

In her blog post titled Color Editing for Web Page Design, Photoshop & Color Specialist Martha DiMeo walks through a case study of a website’s homepage to demonstrate how editing color can be the solution to create unity and visual flow. In a recent project, she needed to combine four disparate images on a webpage. The images had previously been color corrected to be used separately, in either print or email, but didn’t work cohesively when placed together.

DiMeo’s process to reconcile the images involved carefully evaluating the combined images, and adjusting each to create rhythm and harmony. The result is a harmonious image that allows the viewer to absorb the web page with ease. To read how DiMeo identified the problem areas and adjusted the color balance, read the full article.

This article originally appeared on CQ Blog, Martha DiMeo’s blog on her website ChromaQueen.com.

© Martha DiMeo. Paintings © Meldy Phaneuf. Color correction images © Martha DiMeo. Used with permission.