Would you adjust the color in this background?

[rachel k.]

Hey all-

This yellow background is prominant in pretty much all my photos; you could see

the intense, yellow light just looking at the alter. However, the yellow in this

pic (and for the most part, the rest of them) is pretty pronounced. Question is,

would you tone it down for the final prints? Below is an example. I haven't done

anything in PS yet but crop. Thanks for any input, as usual!

 

Rachel<div></div>

[bruce_rubenstein___nyc]

You have a lot of contamination from the ambient light. You can go into Hue/Saturation and desaturate the yellow to get a lot of it out. Then in Levels bring up the WP to a higer value and get something like this:<div></div>

[mike_barrett2]

the above picture looks washed out to me. The biggest thing that bothers me about your image is the lack of contrast and undersexposure. I also desaturated the yellow just a bit and adjusted levels (white point in a lot and black in a little). Better, I think but not great.

 

Mike<div></div>

[maroark]

Yes. Yes I would.

 

<b>Don't forget the red channel</b>. And be liberal with the correction, recover skin tones by painting the layer mask with a soft brush at low opacity. I think the values I used were -60Y, -40R.<div></div>

[chris_leck]

Next time you might try a 3/4 CTO gel over the flash and incandescent WB. You might want to increase the flash output too. It's way less work, even if you still end up Photoshopping to dial things in.

[fotografz]

Sorry, but every one of those "fixes" looks off IMO.

 

Rachel, set the criteria for your color correction ... don't worry about the background, look

to the subject and let the background fall where it may. Get the skin tone right. Get the

flowers right. Get the Bride's dress right.

 

In future learn how to compensate your flash. The bright background added to the Bride's

white dress fooled the camera and flash TTL automation and cut the amount of light on

the subject, basically underexposing the whole shot including the foreground subjects.

That resulted in the warmer ambient light overpowering the weak daylight temp flash and

turned everything yellow.

 

Also, keep your eye out for junk in the background that ends up growing out the subject's

head or cluttering up the shot. It looks to me that if you had moved a few feet to camera

right there was an opening that would have eliminated the rail in the background to a

greater degree.

[robert x]

Hi Rachel -

 

If you go to "Replace Color" and "shift-click" on the various background yellows, you can

eliminate it and turn it whatever colour you want pretty easily. I desaurated it a lot then use

history brush to paint back any over-errors. I then did "auto-curves" on it, and then took a

little more yellow out. I agree with the background being a little busy butit looks better when

not yellow. By the by, in weddings it is spelt ALTAR. It was probably a simple typo, but if not

then you should try get that right !<div></div>

[robert x]

(looks pretty washed out now it has been "saved for web")

[zofia]

Photo Filter, under Adjustments, to add a little warmth back in from the example right above

this. You could use it to cool the original picture too. Then blur the background, easily with

the blur brush, in this case. And clone out the banister between the B/G.

[annealmasy]

Robert X's version is rockin'!

[steve_hovland]

Yes, you should cool it down to avoid draining color out of the people.

 

But I don't think you should color correct the whole thing.

 

Use adjustment layers to select just the background and adjust that.

[gaetano catelli]

Rachel, was this shot taken in jpg mode? for your future consideration, i have found that RAW mode, among other advantages, renders colors more subtly than jpg mode.

[d_loyns]

Rachel I think your Photo is OK the backround color is a little yellow but I would be more concerned about the rails in the Picture as someone pointed out if you moved your subject a bit or focus from a different angle you might have missed those rails I like to keep the natural look to my photos Too much PS takes away from the natural look We do a lot of weddings and try to keep them real spend a little more time getting your set up right you get the best results.

[bruce_rubenstein___nyc]

Yep, my PS fix wasn't greatest, but that's because I avoid ever having to do that sort of fix.

 

I shoot formals, and just about all indoor flash pictures, with the camera set to manual exposure. The camera's built in meter reads the ambient light level. For a formal, where I don't want the ambient color contaminating the light on the subject I make sure it is at least a stop under exposed. The light from the flash gives the correcct esposure of the subject in TTL mode.

 

Also when you're about to do formals there's nothing wrong with doing a test shot and checking the LCD to see how the lighting, backgrouds, shadows and reflections are. It makes sense to me to take 10 seconds to makes sure that there aren't any problems than spend hours fixing things later in PS.

[manolis1]

That would be my....<div></div>

[rachel k.]

Thank you everyone. I couldn't figure out how to get around those gold poles; they were on both sides of where the b&g wanted the shots. The bride even mentioned that she didn't want the gold poles visible, if possible... yet she wanted photos there. gosh. I figured 1 pole was better than 2. It was easy to hide them in the group shots anyway.

Gaetano, I shot in jpeg. I reserve raw for times when I'm worried/under pressure as an added safeguard (I started out in news when raw wasn't an option and it's hard to make the transition, ok?). :)

Robert, yes, your version was great and used a tool I haven't used before. So I will give it a shot.

 

Thanks again.

[steve_levine]

With all due respects, color temperature issues are best dealt with during shooting, rather than as a post production, photo-shop process.

[rachel k.]

Steve- Could not agree more. Sometimes it just doesn't happen for me though. As a nod to this digital age, I seem to do <i>something</i> to my images before final delivery, even to images that are perfectly exposed. I.e., a little bit of sharpening, etc. I would guess most digi shooters do.

[katiehigg]

Hi Rachel. I have no idea how to fix the background, but I had the exact same thing happen to me recently. Luckily it wasn't an event I was getting paid for, but I was really bummed when almost all of my shots had a horrible yellow background. Even after this thread I'm still not sure of how to fix it while taking the pictures. I guess that's why I need to keep learning. :) Good luck!

[gaetano catelli]

"Even after this thread I'm still not sure of how to fix it

while taking the pictures."

 

again, my experience is that shooting in RAW 'covers a multitude of sins', including exaggerated contrast and saturation.

[chris_leck]

Raw won't help a bit when shooting with mixed lighting. You can attempt to optimize for one source, or compromise for more than one source. The OP's problem included insufficient key lighting, which tends to lead to a different WB for each shot (been there...). Balancing light sources (or even making a feeble attempt) should improve results and decrease workload. Unfortunately, many are afraid of taking on this kind of Voodoo.

[gaetano catelli]

"Raw won't help a bit when shooting with mixed lighting."

<p>

RAW won't alter a mismatch of color temperatures as such; but, in my experience, it will nevertheless lessen the garishness of the rendered image.

<p>

below are crops from a single image written in both RAW and jpg when it was shot. both are "As Shot" -- no retouching of hue, saturation, levels, or contrast:

<p>

<b>overcast sky background/tungsten foreground originally written in RAW:</b>

<p>

 

<img src="http://gaetanocatelli.com/images/pn01/6646alex-lea-1a.jpg">

<p>

<b>overcast sky background/tungsten foreground originally written in jpg:</b>

<p>

 

<img src="http://gaetanocatelli.com/images/pn01/6646alex-lea-jpg-1a.jpg">

<p>

{images reside on my web server space, not PN's}

[madredhen]

A black & white conversion using the Gradient map with white and black points each pushed in a little and with the shiny part of the bannister cropped out, 5x7. 8x10 would be a tight squeeze to crop out the bannister though. Just my 2 cents.

[picturesque]

Lots of good answers re the color balance issue. If it really bothered me, I would have gelled the flash. This doesn't have anything to do with white balance, but another thing to do to cut out the gold rails is to use a telephoto lens to cut out as much of the background as possible, and perhaps a wide enough aperture to blur out what remained, too.

[gmahler5th]

My money would go towards a print from Robert X. Nicely done, Robert.