Eliminating Blue Tint - Part III

Sorry, for some reason the image didn't come up. I'll try one more time to

include it. Thanks for your patience.<div></div>

I took a great picture a few weeks which I tought was pretty good until I noticed a wiked blueish tint. The more I looked at this photo the more Bluish it got. I tried all sorts of things like decreasing the Saturation, Changing the Hue and Brightnes, but when I printed the photo it still had that Blueish tint. Much bluer than your picture Brian.

 

First of all I'm not a Photoshop expert. I wouldn't even consider myself a PS Novice. I don't own Photoshop, but I do have a copy of Photoshop Elments that came bundled with my Epson R2400 printer. I also purchased a copy of Picture Window Pro a software editing program that has it's flwas, but for $89 it also has some great features.

 

How I removed the blueish tint from my photograph was to use the simulated Color Corection Filters that came with the software(Picture Window Pro). To counteract the blueish tint, I used it's complementary Yellow CC filter in small amounts. I think I used CC10Y or CC075Y which did the trick.

 

If you have Photoshop Elemts or photoshop you can automatically remove a certain tint by using the "Remove Color Cast" tool. Im not sure how it works, but all you do is click on a part of the picture which should be perfect Black or Pure White and the rest of the colors seem to fall in place. I corrected a few of my pictures with this tool, but it doesn't allways work. If there are no Blacks or Whites in the original then the software gets fooled and you wind up with some more horrible than the original.

 

Good Luck !

I used a Yellow filter at about 10% using Photoshop Elements. Not sure if this is the type of Color cast you are looking for.

I read a bit of your first post just to confirm it wasn't a printing

issue. It seems it might be a calibration issue where your

display's color temp may be set too blue causing your image to

appear more bluer than it really is.

 

Your image seems scene accurate, but that might be my own

personal tastes in the TYPE of blue that really exists in nature

and what you intended in your image. From what I've observed

outdoors it's not a cyan blue but a slate or carbon blue

depending on the color of the lit surface and the amount of catch

light available.

 

Strictly from observation I came up with a rough RGB mix in the

sRGB space at 112,119,136 that made a pretty accurate

grayramp as to what this blue looks like in nature viewed in PS's

Color Picker with Lab's Luminance radio button selected.

 

As for your proper color temp of your display calibration I finally

found in nature a proper bluish white that visually matches

exactly 6500K as measured by my EyeOne Display calibrator off

my CRT display after adjusting by eye the separate OSD RGB

buttons. This type of white appears in midday, hazey, bright and

formless white clouds during winter when it covers the entire sky

as one flat sheen. I looked out my window and glanced back at

my display with a spot on match.

 

As for getting the blue out of your image. I gave it a try by clicking

Options in Curves or Level's. I selected Snap Neutral Midtones

and Find Dark and LIght Colors, then, under Target Colors and

Clipping, I set Shadow clipping to .03 and clicked on the midgray

box which brought up the Color Picker and entered these RGB

numbers 139,132,116. For a warmer white you could click on the

Highlite box in Options and fish around in the Color Picker. It took

me about 2 minutes to arrive at the posted results.

 

Lastly, you should convert your images to sRGB before posting

on the web to show colors as you intended.

I spend a fair amount of time hiking in terrain and vegetation just like that and would be worried about my equipment if I got any of the results shown above, original or modified. My main concern would be the lack of saturation. The slight yellow shift example didn't accomplish much, it's not just color. I wonder if Brian might be suffering from an optical problem, such as iffy zoom lens? Also looks like results from a very funky uncoated Leica Elmar from the mid 30s that I recently owned.

 

Also, he should be using a substantial lens shade.

I received "Photoshop LAB color" by Dan Margulis for Christmas. I haven't read more than a couple of chapters. But early on a recipe is given for this sort of cast. Below is my interpretation of how to apply that recipe.<div></div>

Brian,

 

Here is my work on your shot in photoshop cs2

 

1. Make a duplicate layer, protect those orginial pixels

2. When a single color effects your pics, there are tons of ways to adjust the error. Color balance works nicely if you are delicate. Usually you can take away about 10 - 15 blue, at 1- 5 green, and 1-5 red.

3. Add about 10 - 25 Saturation

4. Shadow/highlight, this is my best friend, only about 2 -5 on this shot on the shadow, add a bit to the highlight slider to take away the washed out areas on the hill and in the forground.

5. Burned the highlights and the trees a bit, with a large dot with only about 50% exposure. On a higher quality pic go for about 20 - 35%.

6. Cloned some of the right side of the forground, because the foreground was really washed out. This darkened it up, but on a quality pick I would never do that.

7. Add about 2 - 5 constrast, usually on my pics I do about 8.

8. Add about 15% unsharp mask, usually on my large files I go about 100 - 185%

 

Other ways to reduce blues, adjust white balance, add a warming filter, individual curves. There are tons of ways to adjust a picutres color. Find they way that works for you. Only use the Color balance trick if you have a pic that is pretty far off but you want it to look ok. Remember only a few to either side of 0 on the color balance.

Thanks very much for all the responses. I'll give each a try.