How to get better muted color tones?

<p>My question might be a bit complicated, but I will try to find the right words:</p>

<p>Most of scanned negatives / digital raw files from outdoor shootings usually have a (to my mind) unnatural, harsh and garish color palette.</p>

<p>Here are some examples: http://imageshack.us/a/img163/1112/pwpi.png (scanned negative) and http://imageshack.us/a/img577/9898/k8m4.jpg <br>

For me it's uncomfortable to look at such a picture and I have the need for more muted, more voluminous and better balanced colors.</p>

<p>That is what I try to achieve: http://imageshack.us/a/img443/8639/n7ss.jpg or this: http://imageshack.us/a/img547/17/nu8t.jpg or this: http://imageshack.us/a/img546/4572/3e5b.jpg</p>

<p>These colors are comfortable, muted and bright at the same time!</p>

<p>I have tried selective color corrections, curves, … played with saturation and white balance for days. But I have the feeling, that there is a profound intervention in the picture which creates a so-called "look". </p>

<p>Who has an idea?</p>

<p>In addition, I have increasingly felt, that images often are reduced to 2-4 shades. So how do I get of such a color impression?</p>

<p>Thanks in advance!</p>

<p>Well, the film stock could be part of the issue, and the calibration of the scanner. However, assuming that the image shown is actually what was taken, here is my analysis.</p>

<p>The red is a little hot, and perhaps the magenta value. Saturation for both of these should be reduced a little but be careful to not kill the pastel color of the bike frame.</p>

<p>The cyan and blue values may also be hot. If only the cyan is altered, try a slight hue shift (right) towards blue, then reduce the saturation a little.</p>

<p>It takes a little patience and the oversaturation can be successfully reduced. Based on the brightness the photo appears to have been taken around noon to 3pm when the lighting can be at is harshest.</p>

<p>CHEERS...Mathew</p>

<p>Depending on how you are scanning, you might want to investigate the scanner settings and options further. I mostly use VueScan for my older scanners and find its neutral settings are a fairly good start for post-processing in Photoshop. That first image looks like some kind of "hdr" effect has been pushed on it.</p>

<p>You also need to look at what kind of color space you are using (doing sRGB might explain some of your complaints). Bit-depth is another dimension to look at.</p>

<p>Post inline in this thread at 700 pixels on the longest end jpegs of your images that show where you try to get this desired look. Even better is to include before and after.</p>

<p>There are plenty of ACR/LR plugins and presets you can download online for getting the look of the camel to brownish skin color with red brown shadows of those models.</p>

<p>This is way too subjective according to taste to offer any specifics on how to get that look because your description uses "muted, balanced and voluminous" which tells me you are seeing something else or you don't know how to describe exactly what you like so others can understand.</p>

<p>The look of an image is driven by each individual colored element to form an overall impression. This is why I described the look the way I did. Notice the blurred green trees behind the models are quite cooked which suggests WB and/or filter like technique was applied.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Either I'm weird, my monitor is off, or yours is. I actually like the bad examples more, with the exception that sharpening might be a touch too aggressive.</p>

<p>See if you like this approach: </p>

<p>Put a color adjustment layer above the image layer. Set it to a light-medium brown. Start by setting it's blending mode to "color" and opacity to 50%. Split both the left and right lower BlendIF sliders and pull the inner halves of the two sliders to about 25% and 75%. </p>

<p>Tweak to taste by iteratively adjusting everything including the brightness, hue and saturation of the color adjustment layer. </p>

<p>When I get back to my PS computer late tonight I'll demo the technique on the images you don't like.</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

 

Based on the four samples you posted, in the ones you like, lighting in the original capture is a major factor.

<p>Its hard to respond helpfully when you know that most photographers boost the contrast and/or saturation of raw images because raws tend to be muted. Equally like Pierre I felt that the examples of "overcooked" didn't look particularly harsh or unnatural to me. I do wonder whether your display is correctly calibrated. Equally if I wanted subdued colour then I might not be photographing in under a high sun towatds the middle of the day.</p>

<p>I've attached a photograph simply to demonstrate that its perfectly possible to achieve muted, understated, colour in a digital photograph, and without being an advanced photoshop user (which I'm not). And if this one looks saturated on your screen you really do need to review your calibration!</p><div></div>

<p>This close enough for you? If not, it's trivial to up the brown, or otherwise tweak it to your heart's content.</p>

<p>I used the recipe I stated in my earlier post. The only change was that I dropped a very small amount of saturation and threw a bit of fake grain into the image before I applied the brown layer.</p>

<p>HTH,</p>

<p>Tom</p>

<p>PS - Guys: I don't especially like this look, either, but this is pretty close to what he asked for. There doesn't have to be anything wrong with his monitor -- he may just prefer it.</p><div></div>

<p>Hey, Tom. Where you been? Hadn't seen ya' around for a while. Can see some of the regulars have been coming back, lately. Good to see ya back, Tom.</p>

<p>Gave it a go in ACR 4.6. Surprised how easy it was to get her skin brown using Split Tone. Here's the Before/After & I'll post the ACR settings afterward.</p><div></div>

<p>Here's the ACR settings which must be applied in 16bit/ProPhotoRGB...</p><div></div>

<p>Thanks for the nice greeting, Tim. How ya doing? :-)</p>

<p>Yup, I'm still alive and kicking. It turns out that the traffic at one of the really old graphic design websites was dropping off, and they were looking to bring some new blood in, so I took a break from photo.net and have been moderating their photography forum for about the past 6 months. I'm not sure how much I can do, but, what the heck, I figured I'll give it a try. </p>

<p>I hope all is well with you as well. Great to hear from you.</p>

<p>Warmest regards,</p>

<p>Tom</p>

<p>And, here's it with just a slight bit of tweaking so that the skin is close to the skin in the first of his "goal" photos: <a href="http://imageshack.us/a/img443/8639/n7ss.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://imageshack.us/a/img443/8639/n7ss.jpg</a><br>

T</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

<p>Another method is to create another layer in PS, convert it to B&W, then dial the opacity right down. Does a nice job of muting colors as well.</p>

<p>Second Ian's method for some photos.</p>

<p>@Ian, Barry - You know the old saying: "A picture is worth 1000 words". Why don't you show us (say, using the original of the above photo) how the method you suggest gets close to one of the "goal" images he cited.</p>

<p>Tom</p>

<p>Ian is a very experienced portrait photographer and already has a very impressive portfolio online. If he suggests a technique I'm inclined to give it a try. It's safe to assume he knows what works.</p>

<p>Also, the sample photo is a copyrighted photo of model <a href="http://www.glamour.de/stars/star-news/vivienne-rojinski-palinas-schwester-zeigt-sich-noch-eine-rojinski">Vivienne Rojinski</a>. The OP did the appropriate thing by linking to the photo. Posting the edited versions here technically violates photo.net's terms of use since the photo wasn't posted here by the original photographer.</p>

<p>Whoops! Sorry, Lex. I didn't pay attention, and just assumed the pix that the OP liked were taken by someone else, but the ones that were too harsh for the OP were taken by him and he wanted to know how to improve them. Please pull my tweaked versions. </p>

<p>WRT to the method suggested by Ian, certainly no disrespect was intended. In fact, I use that method myself all the time, but like all short descriptions of a technique, the devil is in the details, and there are a lot of variations possible within a short description, e.g., how the conversion to B&W is done, what blendIF adjustments (if any) are made, etc. My strong conviction is that if possible (ie, without violating the TOS of PN), it is *always* better to show that a suggested technique does what was requested, at least in the hand of the person who proposed the technique, so that when someone else tries it, they know it's at least possible. </p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>Since the PN administrators/moderators are on top of enforcing their TOU, they are welcome to take down my demo posted here.</p>

<p>I'll show with my own image the differences in approaches discussed here and why just desaturating a color image does not produce the results the OP wants to achieve as seen in his linked images.</p>

<p>Three versions are seen below with the last one applying the split tone settings with some tweaks to get what I think the look that's in those images. This will most likely also demonstrate why this is such a subjective topic influenced by both the image it's applied to as well as to the tastes of the viewer.</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

<p>What a great tip Ian. Thank you. Just tried it on a pic of my own and can see where this will come in handy.</p>

<p>Show us by applying to one of your images, Phil, so others can see how this is going to come in handy. I see no use for it at this point. I've tried it on a number of images and it doesn't deliver desirable results.</p>

<p>Please show us. I want to learn something new.</p>

About getting natural colors, I'd suggest to give a glance at what those guys are working and at their PS plugins. I use their workflow for

my scanned images and get the best balanced and "natural" colors, without the extra saturation and strange wizardries all other software

do to the processed files.

Now they also have a workflow for digital RAW file processing.

 

http://www.c-f-systems.com/Phototips.html#completeintegrity

 

Even a bare reading of their documentation is worth considering.

 

And no, I' not in any business relation with them.

<p>Tom, just take a garishly colored image (if you have one handy) and try it yourself. It takes about 15 seconds. (Edit) Sorry Tom saw your other posts on the topic. I'll see if I can pop something when I get home from work. I didn't realize you already know this method.</p>

<p>Here's two, brought straight in with no white balance or any color correction, just the b/w layer at opacity 50%.</p><div></div>

<p>Second one with the b/w layer</p><div></div>