How do I get rid of green tint

<p>I took several photos of my grand daughter in bright sunshine and I think the green tint (visible on the back of her arms and underside of her face) came from reflected light off the lawn. She was running around and it isn't there in all the photos, just some and in different places on her skin in other photos. Anyway, I've tried every thing I know in post to eliminate it (I'm just slightly better than a beginner with CS4) I've tried everything I know, I can reduce it but not get rid of it! The photo below is the RAW converted to jpg NO post except to resize. exif should be intact if needed. Thanks for any help!</p><div></div>

<p>Move the white balance sliders in the raw conversion. Or better yet, use the eyedropper on the whites of the eyes, zoom in on them first.</p>

<p>What Jeff said. Also, if it's only on part of her (as in the example above, where the shadow areas show the reflection, but it's not strong everywhere), you may have to do some selective adjustments. This gets you into the adjustment brush in Lightroom, or into Layers and Masks in Photoshop. Good luck.</p>

<p>This is a place where Nik Color Control Points really shine. Place a point on the green, use the color picker to pick up a skin tone from the side of the arm that is not affected and the green immediately disappears. You can use Smart Masking to control the area covered if needed. I did not use masking here. It did require three points, near the wrists, mid arm and under the shadow of the sleeve on the shoulder. Took less than ten seconds. Also placed a Color Control Point on the face, brow between the eyes, and adjusted the brightness and the green slider to remove the green from the face. Another three or four seconds. There is still a little green in spots that a little more effort could be removed. You can add Color Control Points to most Adobe software by using Viveza. Great software. I use Nikon Capture NX2</p><div></div>

<p>Like Gary says, a piece of cake with Nik Color Control Points. Download the trial of Viveza or Capture NX2 and solve the problem.</p>

<p>The Lightroom 4 adjustment brush does a more natural looking job, in my opinion. Gary's edit has added far too much global magenta.</p>

<p>The really nice thing about the LR4 adjustment brush is that the effect is completely editable, you can increase, decrease, cancel etc any adjustment, or any part of that adjustment, at any stage. It is only in version 4 that the adjustment brush has included local white balance control, but it is an incredibly powerful tool. Total time, about 90 seconds.</p>

<p>But of course, tone adjustments like this are very heavily influenced by monitor calibration and personal preference.</p><div></div>

<p>Looks to me like light reflecting off of grass (or other green foliange or surface) gave that tint. To some extent you can mitigate it by making global adjustment to the green-magenta balance (call it white balance or whatever--same basic approach), but then you start to get other problems--in Gary's example, her hair is starting to look a bit pink.</p>

<p>Masking off the affected area is potentially a much more powerful approach, but a really good masking is (to me at least) a very laborious, difficult, skill-taxing, interative process--and even then, sometimes I'm happy with the result and sometimes not.</p>

<p>Where practicable, the best approach is not to have reflections from a colored surface provide much of the light. Sometimes you can arrange that, sometimes not. Another approach is to convert the shot to B&W.</p>

 

<p>Thanks a lot guys! I'll check out Nik Color Control Points. Jeff, thanks for the tip on the eye dropper. I could get the picture to that point...but not in 1 second!</p>

<p>I agree that Gary's tweak added too much magenta in portions of the girl's skin not picking up the green reflection from the grass. Similarly, overall white balance adjustments (eg, whites of the eyes), by definition, will not be selective and fix only the troublesome part of her skin.</p>

<p>I like Scott's approach, but for the past 4 or 5 years, my favorite tool for such color correction tasks is Color Mechanic Pro ( http://dl-c.com/content/view/16/30/ ). The attached image shows the corrections I used.</p>

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<p>... and here is the result of the above corrections. Note: I also slightly sharpened the OP's image, but now I see that might have unduly emphasized the dirty areas of her skin.</p>

<p>Tom M</p><div></div>

<p>While typing my earlier thanks, some other have offered additional help...thanks guys! Dave, I thought it was reflected light off the grass too. I have shot many photos of her in this location under bright light and this is the first time I've seen this in the photos. I don't do many B&W conversions, maybe this is the easiest solution? Scott, I don't have lightroom. Something else to consider. I agree with all of you about the magenta cast in Gary's fix, maybe that could be adjusted? but it was clean of the worst parts of the green tint. Tom, That was another problem I was running into...everything I did ended up making the greenest areas look like dirt! </p>

<p>I can't tell you all how much I appreciate your help and effort!</p>

<p>Doug,</p>

<p> You can do a similar thing in CS4, well actually ACR via Bridge. Open Bridge and navigate to your image, open in ACR, you can do this even if it is a jpeg.</p>

<p>In the ACR panel choose Adjustment Brush, then select Color. I normally select a crazy color to show where I am brushing, you can adjust the size flow etc. When you have done your brush stroke then adjust the color of your adjustment.</p>

<p>CS 6 has the latest WB control on the adjustment brush so you would need to update to CS6 to get the full controls that LR4 has. But you can do it like this in CS 4.</p>

<p>Here is a screen shot of the ACR panel and the adjustment brush, apparently a picture is worth a thousand words!</p><div></div>

<p>I'm with Scott on this one. ACR is there is you have Photoshop, and a good reason to buy Photoshop if you don't have it.</p>

<p>Another way is to use the tone curve in LR4 Develop module. I adjusted only the green curve here with three points set on the peaks of green histogram (Before and After). Took only a few seconds. I'm not sure this is as good as Scott's adjustment though. I think the adjustment brush route is better because it is local...and doesn't affect the entire image.</p><div></div>

<p>BTW, in case you didn't happen to notice, the OP's is tagged as Adobe RGB (1998), not the standard for web display, sRGB. Depending on which browser you use, what software you used to view & process the image, etc., you may be seeing something quite different from what he sees. This might explain why the colors in some of the responses look so exaggerated.</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>Just create a new layer, set the blend mode to hue, and paint with a good skin color and soft brush at low opacity over the affected area. Or, if in camera raw, go to the HSL/Grayscale panel, pick the Hue panel, and move the yellow slider to -70. Or, you can add a Selective Color adjustment layer, select yellows, and move the magenta slider to +25.</p>

<p>Tom, thanks for the heads up. After I resized the raw, I just used "save as" (which I have not used in years) because I thought that selection kept exif in tact...If I'm mistaken about that somebody please let me know. I always use "save for web" because that's how I use most of my JPG's and that one I have sRGB selected...or it came that way, been too long I forget ;-)</p>

<p>Scott, Thanks for the screen shot! How did you know I'd understand easier that way? ;-)</p>

<p>JDM Thanks and yes I have PS.</p>

<p>Dennis Thank you very much for your help and effort, but as stated earlier I do not have lightroom.</p>

<p>New Haven Thank you! Another method to try/play with. :-)</p>

<p>You know guys, I joined PN some time ago to learn and I have. Been reading in the forums for years and somebody is always asking a question that I've learned something from the responses. This was my very first "posted question"...thanks so very much! </p>

<p>DO: <em>"... Tom, That was another problem I was running into...everything I did ended up making the greenest areas look like dirt! ..."</em></p>

<p>I could be wrong, but I don't think it is a processing artifact -- I think she actually was somewhat dirty, and the dirt was quite noticeable on places like the undersides of her arms, ie, just where green light coming up from the grass would be the most prominent.</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>Doug, I'm not at my Photoshop computer, but I think you are correct that when using "Save For Web", it's somewhat easier to inadvertently strip out all the EXIF info compared to a "Save As" command. However, if you want to use "Save As", you have to precede it with a "Adobe RGB" to "sRGB" conversion (not assignment) before you use the "Save As" command for the broadest compatibility.</p>

<p>Tom M<br>

.</p>

<p>This could be folly trying to show such subtle color corrections on the web but i will try. I am sure about one thing though that is definitely dirt, just look at her fingers. I will I did everything in Lightroom 4 and will post a screen shot as most of the controls are the same as ACR4. I also used some exposure adjustment brushes on her face and hair to reduce shadows and brighten her eyes.</p><div></div>

<p>This looks too magenta as my desktop background but looks great in Photoshop and Lightroom. Here is the screenshot.</p><div></div>

<p>FWIW, New Haven's suggestion to paint with a better hue is a very good technique that I use myself on occasion. The only problem is that if you paint with hue (or put the desired color on a new layer with the blend mode set to "Hue"), the result will take on the saturation value of the underlying image at each point. </p>

<p>Since the areas in question are a bit dirty, they probably have less saturation than desirable. So, to clear this up, I often will make two copies of the layer with color. Set one to "Hue" blend mode, and the other to "Saturation" blend mode. Then you can adjust the opacity of each for the best overall effect. </p>

<p>So, now that we've got hue and saturation taken care of, this leaves the big question of what to do about the lower luminosity of those pixels where there is dirt. Obviously, one shouldn't just increase the brightness of all the pixels in that general area because you will almost certainly brighten "clean", adjacent pixels that don't need brightening. </p>

<p>The approach I take to the luminosity on low rez dirty images is to "steal" a patch of good skin (ie, skin with a similar texture, lighting, and brightness), put it on a new layer, run it through a high pass filter, and then change the blending mode of that layer to "soft light". If too much of the dirt texture is still showing through, and I don't have the resolution to work on it pixel by pixel, I might apply a bit of a blur and brightening to the entire dirty area, and then put the "soft light" high-pass filtered layer on top of that. I find this technique of replacing skin texture to be extremely general and useful. Obviously, if there is resolution to spare, one can use the patch tool, content-aware fill, spot and other tools instead of the pasting-in-texture approach I just outlined.</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>Hi Doug<br>

As a PS user, did you try to deal with this as a general color cast and not as a localized one?<br>

Open file, duplicate the layer<br>

GO to filters ->blur -> average (the layer will turn into the color cast)<br>

Adjustment layers -> curves <br>

Midpoint picker click on the layer with the color cast<br>

Turn this layer off and in principle you will see the image with the correct colors (providing your WB was ok)<br>

Flatten the file and if the result is ok, you're done.</p>

 

<p>Antonio, the average color technique (that you described) has become well known primarily because it is easy to understand and simple to perform. Sometimes it improves things, but unfortunately, it can give wildly incorrect results, and IMHO, should never be trusted. </p>

<p>The reason for the inaccuracy is because the results depend on all the colors in the image, not just the skin tones. So, for example, if a perfectly exposed, perfectly color corrected person is standing in front of a nice blue sky, this technique will make the entire image (including the person) more yellow. However, if the same subject is standing in the same place but it's now closer to sunset and the sky is magenta/pink, the technique will move the entire image towards the green or cyan. Many things besides the background unduly influence the averaging technique. For example, the results can depend on the cropping and framing, the color of clothing worn, etc. The attached image illustrates how different the average color would be if the OP simply had cropped or framed his image differently. </p>

<p>If one is going to try to get by with simple mechanical approaches to color correction, just shoot a frame with a grey (or underexposed white) card to get a decent color balance. Another "mechanical" approach is to adjust the image to make the skin tones come out close to the published average CMYK values for a person of that race, eg, http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93363. However, a quick read through even a few of the many threads on photo.net pertaining to color correction should convince anyone that there is a lot more to color correction than using highly simplified methods. For example, take a quick read through these two threads: http://www.photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00WqOl and http://www.photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00X75f. </p>

<p>HTH,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>Whoops, and here is the image I forgot to attach to the last post.</p>

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