Frustrated by color correction

[mark_lapolt___new_haven__c]

I was wondering if I could get some basic 'Rules of Thumb' from some

of the guru's out there with regards to color correction. The

attached photo is a classic. The young ladies face is in shadow, and

the rest of her is bathed in the golden light of near sunset. I'd

really like to get her face in line with a much warmer skin tone, but

I mus confess that I'm still a little confused by the wealth of tools

I have at my disposal in PS CS. Can someone give me a little color

correction 101?

 

I know that step one is to mask off her face from the rest of the

scene. beyond that, I'm not sure what. From what I understand from

color theory, I need to add green to offset the magenta cast. What

tool do I use? Levels? Curves?

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

TIA

Mark<div></div>

[beauh44]

Hi Mark, There's a bunch of different ways to skin the cat. You're already half way there by recognizing that you have a bit of a magenta cast going on, and that the opposite of magenta is green.

 

You could use curves or levels or even the color balance adjustment. If you use adjustment layers, as opposed to working on the layer directly, it's easier to undo things if you mess up.

 

Levels would be the easiest to explain - just fire it up and in the drop-down "RGB" box, select green and try sliding the middle slider until you get rid of the magenta.

 

Notice the 3 eyedroppers in levels (They're in Curves too) The middle eyedropper is for fixing color casts. In order for it to work properly, you must find something in your image that's "middle gray". Just select the middle gray eyedropper and click on something in the image that should be middle gray and if you're lucky, it'll take care of the color cast. (Some images - like a sunset - may not have a middle gray though)

 

Many people don't use the color balance adjustment but I like how it's laid out because you can easily see what the opposing colors are on the three sliders; the opposite of cyan is red; the opposite of magenta is green; and the opposite of yellow is blue. You can adjust the shadows, mid-tones and highlights seperately. This helped me when I was trying to figure all this out - it just seemed more logical than curves or levels. Most pros will tell you to use curves once you get the hang of things though.

 

Lastly, if you're near a good book store like Barnes & Noble, you might check some of the books available, like Real World Photoshop by Blatner & Frasier. Good luck!

[mark_lapolt___new_haven__c]

Thanks Beau, I'll try the color balance tool. Are there any other recommended texts on Photoshop? Most that I've browsed through haven't had real good color cast explanations.

 

Mark

[beauh44]

I took a 5 minute stab at it - I'm on a laptop which hasn't got the best display for doing this sort of thing. I think she's still a little "off". ;-)

 

She looked a bit over-sharpened to me too. So I made a duplicate layer and blurred it with gaussian blur, decreased the opacity of the blurred layer and erased all the blur off her eyes and some off lips, jewelry, etc. Seems to have helped with skin texture, maybe.

 

Back to that gray eyedropper thing again - if you'll take a Kodak 18 percent gray card and put it in one of the shots you take, it can really make this easier. You'll take that one shot with the gray card in it and using that gray eyedropper, click on it. That should take care of weird color casts. You can save that curve and apply it to the rest of your images. Good luck!<div></div>

[steve_swinehart]

You'll have to work very carefully on this photo to color correct it. The gross answers of "Levels" or "Curves" will induce a couple of problems while correcting only one. If you look at the highlight on her forehead, you'll see it's slightly blue, as is the shirt on the shadow side.

 

Any correction you make to add green overall will cause these areas to go cyan. I'd use "Hue and Saturation" correction layers. Don't be afraid to use more than one Hue and Saturation layer, or to pick more than one color after you finish with a color on that layer.

 

You'll have to try a couple of different approaches, but it shouldn't be too hard - plus you want to learn how this works. So trying multiple approaches will give you more ideas. Here's two ways I'd try.

 

The first uses the colors without a mask.

 

To see what will happen, and as a starting point, you could add a Hue/Saturation layer and pick the "blue" on the layer menu, and use the color picker on the shadow side of the shirt to select the blue color. Move the slider to minus out the blue and see what happens with her face (it should redden as you're taking out the blue).

 

Then on a second Hue/Saturation layer, pick "red" as the color find the reddest part of her face and move the slider to add cyan and also desaturate slightly.

 

The second approach would be to mask her face and work on that individually, but, you'll still have to figure out how to adjust the blue in the shirt shadows, and the slightly blue cast on the forehead highlight.

 

You can also over correct and using the "History Brush" paint the color you want back into an area.

[jtk]

This is an excellent exercise!

 

...the shirt has some cyan as well as blue...due to the combination of lighting in the original photo...cyan is of course the opposite of red, and red involves yellow, which means if the shirt is treated as "blue" (ie if red is added), the shirt will become green because of the extra yellow :-) ...therefore I'd guess magenta and somewhat less yellow should be added to the shirt...

 

But the shirt presents special problems because causing a nominally "white" shirt to look "neutral" in very warm light might be a mistake visually...

 

fun!

[steve_swinehart]

Yeah, the cyan/blue cast is a problem - and that's the nifty thing I like about the color picker in the Hue/Saturation layer control - it samples the color exactly and then lets you control only that color as opposed to Curves or Levels where you're affecting a whole range of colors within one broad color group.

[jim_doty]

LEt's see if this works.

[paul -]

Combination lighting from different sources creates big headaches. Not that it would help with shots already made, but you could save yourself a lot of grief by putting some sort of warming filter/gel over the fill flash to match it to sunset light.

[jim_doty]

Mark:

 

I set set out to remove the cyan cast on her shoulder and the magenta cast on her face. I also reduced the overall contrast.

 

I used Shadow/Highlight to bring up the shadows and tone down the highlights a bit. I used Selective Color on the whole image and picked cyan to reduce the cyan tint on her shoulder.

 

I did a selection of the shaded side of her face, featherd about 20 pixels, and used Selective Color again to reduce the magenta cast so that side of the face is more neutral in tone.

 

In general, if there is too much of a color cast in a digital image, I prefer to reduce that color, rather than add the opposite color (as you would do in the wet darkroom).

 

The warm light is obviously coming from her left. Making the shaded side of the face warm enough and bright enough to match the sunny side would look a bit unnatural.

 

Jim

[ben_rubinstein___mancheste]

Any use?

 

Two layers, on the bottom I adjusted the colour, I did a 'hide all' on the second and painted back the right cheek.

 

Another colour balance to tune up

 

Shadow/highlights

 

any use?<div></div>

[cg1]

Here's my take. Shadows & Highlights, Curves, Hue and Saturation.

[bernard_bennett]

This is my answer using levels, curves, colour correction, & gaussian blur in PicWindowPro. time 5 mins.

[perfect_exposure]

And another...

 

photo filter to remove colour cast from white areas. selective hue adjustment to remove magenta tint from face. selective smart blur to remove facial blemishes. ND gradient to balance lighting from top right to bottom left. reddish gradient from top right to bottom left to warm tones from neutral and give impression of sunset lighting. shadow inner border/vignette to empahsize face. selective hue changes to teeth and lips.

what you can do is endless. much simpler and less time consuming to get it as good as possible in the camera and leave minimal work to be done is PS.<div></div>

[perfect_exposure]

oops...

 

forgot the final save...<div></div>

[cg1]

Perfect Exposure:

Is your monitor calibrated? Your versions are looking a little off. The images are looking

murky. The image I posted was corrected using a properly calbrated monitor. If it doesn't

look very good on your monitor then something is broken in your monitor setup and or

ICC profile.

 

You can also download the Photodisc test image from my website. This image should tell

you if your monitor is not properly calibrated.

 

www.colormedic.com

 

cg

[terry_spade]

Copy layer, on top layer only apply color balance go to yellow----Blue -30 or toward yellow. Next again on top layer apply Gaussian blur radius 2.0 pixels(on larger files you'll have to go with a higher radius). Blending change -Screen Opacity 38%. Or adjust to suit.

 

Terry

[terry_spade]

This one same as first one I did. Except I sampled her upper forehead to my left. Used the brush in color mode 50% to color in her forehead and right side (my left) brush in color mode 25% for her left side (my right). This was quick and sloppy but I did it to give you the idea of what can be done.

 

Terry

[mark_lapolt___new_haven__c]

Wow..... Thank you all for the great tips.

I like the Selective Color tool, it seems a little simpler and easier to use than Curves (or Levels for that matter), and has the ability to save the correction setting for batch application. The gentle application of blur really helps the photo too (I am often guilty of oversharpening, but I have learned to always save a copy of the original file prior to making any alterations, so I can go back). I got so many great tips, that I'm still going through all of them, and trying out all of the suggestions.

 

But, I think the most important lesson I took away from this has nothing to do with Photoshop. A $5 sheet of CTO gell over the flash head (-1 fill) would have warmed up the shadow areas, and the whole photo would have been easier to handle.

 

Thanks again,

Mark

[rick_lapalombara2]

PERFECT EXPOSURE: Nice work!

[brian ball]

I've been developing some alternative methods for solving color cast and shadow/

highlight problems. If you copy the background a few times (let's say 3) and apply a heavy

Gaussian blur to the third copy, a moderate blur to the second, and a light blur to the first

and then merge the layers with equal opacity weighting, you end up with a gently blurred

version of the original over the original background layer. From there, you can set the

blending mode to overlay which will immediately increase the contrast and exacerbate

your problems. The next step is to simply invert the top layer. This has the effect of

countering both shadow and highlight issues as well as color casts. As this may be too

potent at 100% opacity, lower the opacity until it looks suitable. This effect tends to

soften grain and noise while preserving edge definition. To increase contrast, saturation,

and sharpness, you may use a copy of the previous combined blurred layer to create an

"unsharp mask" of sorts. Make a copy of the original backgroud, invert the blurred layer,

set its opacity to 50% and merge it down onto the background copy. With the "unsharp

mask" layer, set the blending mode to either overlay or one of the others in the menu

below overlay, and you will see a subtle enhancement without oversharpening of the grain

or halo formation. Here's what I did with these methods on this picture, applying these

effects very subtly and conservatively.

[perfect_exposure]

my monitor is fine. I don't like oversaturated colours but maybe my version could be improved. My final final attempt with a little bit more saturation and some cleaning up.<div></div>

[antoine_morin]

Looking at all the above suggestions and the various resulting images illustrates a point I am slowly getting to accept:

 

It is very difficult not to go overboard when adjusting an image.

 

Its corollary is that:

 

In general, I tone down any adjustment by 50% before saving a temporary copy. And then, I look at it the next day and often reduce again the amount of correction.

 

My take, but without the 24h delay:<br>

<img src="http://simulium.bio.uottawa.ca/images/photonet17.jpg">

<p>

 

 

 

Curves to lighten the shadows.<br>

Shirt desaturated.<br>

Noise median, 3 pixels, masked the eyes, lips, hairs, jewellery<br>

Saturation and hue to bring back the yellow <br>

[logun_johnston]

http://www.djmmortal.com/gallery/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=62

[zaqhydn_photartist]

Mr. Morin did fantastic with the correction. Good work.

 

My method of correcting this challange:

 

1. use base layer to create duplicate layers

- one for the shirt correction, one for the face, and one for the background.

 

2. correct each layer so the 'part' of the image you are focusing on is good, then erase or 'scrap' the rest, leaving behind a paice of the image. repeat with each part needed.

 

3. keep the warm sunlight hue and most of the image color from the base layer, it's beautiful.

 

4. dodge the eyes and teeth.

 

5. flatten and save.

 

using a ChromaLens tool when you go shooting might avert this 'extreme' type of color balance in the future.

 

www.ChromaLens.com<div></div>