Color balancing flesh tones

[scott_ferris]

<p>P.S. Just looked up this thread on my uncalibrated iPad, it looks very different! Interestingly they can be calibrated and used as<a _mce_href="http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/07/why-i-needed-an-ipad.html" href="http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/07/why-i-needed-an-ipad.html"> high quality mobile screens.</a><br></p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>@Tim - I caught the wild violet tone, but I was going to be a nice guy and not say anything. :-)</p>

<p>@Daniel - Very, very funny! </p>

<p>@Scott - I whole-heartedly second your comments on cordial, collegial discussion. It is THE way such discussions should be conducted, NOT confrontational. If it was anything less, I wouldn't participate as much as I do on photo.net. THANK YOU, as well!</p>

<p>BTW, I realize your iPad is uncalibrated, but how did the image tweaks that we are talking about look on it? Also, if it hasn't already been said, your camera calibration technique does possess exactly the qualities you mentioned. Good call.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>@Rae - Spurred on by Scott's comments about finding that particular lipstick on your website, I also Googled you and had a look at your website. Very, very nice, I must say! If you did the post production work on the images in your the galleries on your website, you are clearly no slouch at PS, color management,etc.</p>

<p>BTW, I don't know if anyone has ever mentioned this to you, but when you left click on some of the images during some of the slide shows on your website (eg, "teens"), the click takes you to the main Adobe page, http://www.adobe.com/. This doesn't happen all of the time, but it does happen in Firefox (3.6.8), Safari (5.0.1), and Chrome (5.0.375.127).</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

[jammer_jammer]

<p>I just happened across this thread after not visiting this site for quite a while. I'm finding it quite interesting to see how differently everyone is correcting this image. To my eyes, a couple of the corrections here are really yellow or greenish. One or two seemed to have made the bride's skin almost ashen. This really scared me into thinking that my monitor calibrations were way off so I re-calibrated and this is what I came up with after about 10 minutes of eye ballin' it while doing color balance and hue saturation adjustments and increasing the contrast with a levels layer.<br />Does this look WAY off on your screens or am I in the ballpark?</p>

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

[scott_ferris]

<p>Tom<br>

On the iPad the differences are much smaller, as are the actual reproductions, all the images and their variations are closer to each other and less extreme. I don't understand how people could do colour critical work on them unless the files are much bigger. The images themselves look very good, the very high screen resolution in ppi and the evenness of brightness as your angle changes make image viewing on it a real pleasure, they also all look much sharper. I was given it as a present, but see more and more practical photo applications for it, from remote camera usage, to client viewing captures in real time, to interactive lighting diagrams etc etc.</p>

<p>Jammer,</p>

<p>Certainly on my screen you still have a very magenta cast. Most noticeable on the top of his right sleeve, but also on the top of her left arm and nose, there are also pink highlights on the dress. Though that does not follow through to the stonework so possibly a too narrow hue adjustment?</p>

<p>Take care, Scott.</p>

[jammer_jammer]

<p>Thanks Scott,<br />Today, I definitely see that there is still too much magenta in my version. I've done some more experimenting and I'm finding it very difficult to find the right balance between magenta and cyan. If I move cyan enough to make the skin OK, the background goes WAY off. I think a selective approach might be the only way to go here. I know a lot of this is subjective but MY brain sees your versions as too yellow.<br />I've looked at everyone's attempts dozens of times now and although I don't think there is quite enough color in the brides skin, I agree with Patrick in that Bill's lightened CS3 version looks the most natural. I'm having one hell of a time trying to replicate what he did though. Most likely because I don't quite understand some of the steps he took. I also need more experience using "blend if".<br />Thanks for lending your eyes to my attempt. I appreciate it.</p>

[jammer_jammer]

<p>OK, this is the best I could do today. Tomorrow's another day. I'm just not willin' to give up any more red or magenta than this. I'd rather lean warm than cool for the skin tones.</p>

[jammer_jammer]

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

[rae_wells]

<p>Thanks for the heads up about the issue with my site, Tom. I wasn't aware of it. And thanks for the compliment! I did the retouch on the portraits, but I didn't do the work on those wedding album pages. That's the level I really want to get to, and thanks again to all of you guys for helping me. The manipulation to the images on the album pages is absolutely gorgeous, although it may not be truly visible on the site due to the size. I've been torn as to whether to take the pages off and go with more powerful, single images, which is a big part of the reason this learning curve is so important to me. I think there are too many posed photos in those albums with the way the market is turning. ...but that's a whole other topic of conversation.</p>

[JRCrowe]

<p>This is using the Custom White balance eyedropper in lightroom 3. Just presented as an example not as the perfect solution. </p><div></div>

[scott_ferris]

<p>Jammer, you are very welcome.</p>

<p>To me you are still showing lots of pink though.</p>

<p>Try my method just different settings, you can get rid of his shirt and her dresses issues easily then. Your work is looking very close to Tim's, mine is closer to Tom's. The yellow and red are two different things. I can make mine more or less yellow without getting the magenta on the clothes. Whilst the couples complexions are a challenge, and that is what first interested me in the thread, I still believe that this is a global issue and selective adjustments are not necessary.</p>

<p>Take care, Scott.</p>

[JRCrowe]

<p>I used the brides gown for a sample.</p>

[rae_wells]

<p>Wow. I just got to the batch of posed images that the sample image came from. I thought maybe he was just holding his breath, but he looks crazy red in a lot of these. There are some where her skin tone actually looks almost right, just a bit warm, but he's red. I'm definitely going to have to do selective work on those. Daniel, I SO wish I could use your method right now.</p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>@Jammer - While you successfully removed much of the overall red cast in your 1st version, I agree with Scott that it left too much red/magenta in the skin tones. Your 2nd version was considerably better. I especially liked the fact that there was a clear difference in the hues of the B & G's skin, not just a difference in brightness or color saturation. However, in the 2nd version, it appears that you introduced some weird color reversals in the large, flat, upward-facing rectangular patch of stonework in the background. Some parts of it look pinkish, others cyan.</p>

<p>@Rae - Yup, it's clear that the groom has quite a florid complexion. The questions you are now going to face are: how much of his red complexion do you want to remove (vs. simply evening it out), and how do you ensure consistency in his complexion from shot to shot when you are making such fairly large corrections in post processing.</p>

<p>@all - In our quest for even simpler workflows, especially approaches that can be successfully applied to a large group of pix without much per-image tweaking, I tried yet another approach. I applied "Color Mechanic" ( http://www.dl-c.com/cmtour1.html ) to a sharpened version of your original image, using the attached transformation. I then added adjustment layers to deal with brightness, contrast, etc. and came up with something that looked quite good except for the stonework. I then added a 2nd, very simple Color Mechanic step to take care of that, smoothed the B's skin a bit to remove the patchiness introduced by all this processing and came up with the image attached to the next message. </p>

<p>Rae, at the risk of stating the obvious, if you aren't familiar with Color Mechanic, learning to use it in the middle of a paid job is not a good idea, but you should keep it in mind for the future. It's at least as simple as any of the other methods proposed and can produce very nice results. It was particularly good at evening out the G's complexion.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

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

[tom_mann1]

<p>.... and here is the result of an approach where the major part of the color corrections were done using "Color Mechanic". Other adjustments used to produce this were described in the post immediately preceding this one.</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>PS - Oh, I also dropped the brightness of the background slightly when I playing around with this approach.</p><div></div>

[rae_wells]

<p>It never hurts to state the obvious, Tom. I do have my blonde moments. ;-)</p>

[jammer_jammer]

<p>Tom and Scott,<br>

Thanks again for your comments.<br>

I'm becoming obsessed now so this is my last attempt......................I SWEAR!</p><div></div>

[rae_wells]

<p>Jammer, I think it looks good, but my eyes are going crazy right now from looking at so many of them. His face looks like it's still got a bit of magenta...maybe...either that or I'm losing it. Be glad you've only got this ONE to obsess over. I do plan to take the previous advice and revisit what I've done later.</p>

<p>Has anyone tried Helicon photo editor? I'm looking for a couple of different things, (good noise reduction, too) and from what I'm reading, it sounds like this might be a decent (and FREE) option. There's actually a tutorial on fixing red faces. So, if any of you have used it, what was your opinion?</p>

[scott_ferris]

<p>Jammer,</p>

<p>Yep well on track, way close enough to just be personal preference and view differences now. It was fun really wasn't it?</p>

<p>Take care all, Scott.</p>

[JRCrowe]

<p>One more attempt with the previous lightroom white balance adjustment with a hue saturation adjustment layer with a layer mask for the lips and eyes. Who knows what it will look like on the web, but it looks pretty good here. Trying to keep it simple. If there are a lot of images to fix it needs to be easy. Jammer I noticed that their hair has gone dark in your last attempt. This could drive everyone crazy. But its fun. This is a great learning forum.</p><div></div>

[rae_wells]

<p>John, looking at that after being away from the computer, and without looking at any files in comparison, it looks totally real with regards to what I was actually seeing. Even the blue trim on the door seems to be accurate. Can you send me a message with exact steps? I obviously just need to go forward and invest in LightRoom if I'm going to handle these issues on my own now. I'll re-work the images I did today. (expletives) This looks much better and more realistic. The only thing I'd change is the pit shadow. As a female, I'd bet $100 that she wouldn't print this one without knowing that her armpits couldn't be lightened.</p>

[jacopo_brembati]

<blockquote>

<p>I'd set the white balance for shade, and the files looked great in camera.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>So, why you have this red/magenta cast?</p>

<p>Jacopo</p>

[ob_one]

<p>Any suggestion on using the WB correction accessories? e.g. color plate, or stuffs like that? <br /><br /><h3>Signature URL removed.</h3><b>Not allowed per photo.net Terms of Use.</b></p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>As I recall, several people, early in the thread, suggested things like including a McBeth color checker in a shot, setting an in-camera custom white balance by taking a shot of a gray card, etc. Scroll up, and I'm sure you'll find these discussions.</p>

<p>Tom M.</p>