Color Problems

[andrew_hull]

<p>Tim:</p>

<p>Thanks for your patience in this thread. I am on a calibrated monitor.</p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>Andrew, I assume the image you posted Apr 17, 2011; 02:19 p.m. (EST) was more or less "an original", not a version that was well-worked over. OTOH, since I wasn't there when you took that shot, I just guessing at how the colors should really appear. Another problem is that the center of your image is somewhat overexposed, while the edges are considerably darker. I hope this wasn't intentional vignetting because this was the 1st aspect of the image I tried to correct. :-)</p>

<p>I've never tried to scan Ektar, but my guess is that the problem is that the scan parameters were off. When you scanned it, did you set both ends of each of the three histograms manually? If not, this could be one problem. </p>

<p>Assuming all of the above, I tried to tweak it, but, to be honest, I'm almost too embarrassed to post the results of my tweak. That was indeed a tough one.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

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

[tom_mann1]

<p>...</p>

<p>PS (in edit) - What was the lighting at the time of that shot? Cloudy bright? Light haze? Heavy overcast?</p><div></div>

[andrew_hull]

<p>Tim: Mind sharing what you teaked. Looks like you made it a little colder, no? It was an overcast day. Kind of foggy</p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>Andrew, might you have been referring to me (Tom M), or were you referring to Tim L in your last post? </p>

<p>If it was me, yes, I guessed that it was overcast. To my eyes, a cooler look seemed to be more realistic, so I went in that direction. I'm not a big fan of overly warming up such days if there is lots of background showing -- they never look realistic to me. If it's just a headshot and the background is less important than the skin tones, sure, but not for a shot like this. OTOH, that's just my own personal view. YMMV.</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>If you want good skin tones with a cool overcast white balance then you need to pull back the blue channel in this area or better yet use Hue/Saturation or Selective Color tool to warm up the skin tone. But usually the Hue adjust adds green instead of yellow. The skin in Tom's second attempt looks too maroon brown (add more yellow), the first too red brown (add more green).</p>

<p>Another issue about adding a cool WB and adjusting the color tables this way is that it shifts the skin hues so far to the red/magenta/purple spectrum, the Hue sliders will pick another hue instead of green/yellow as well as affect unwanted hues in the same range. A color that looks one way isn't seen by the tools as that color because the WB shift changed and baked into the pixels a hue the eyes perceive differently.</p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>Hi Tim - You are, of course, correct. I was being lazy and didn't want to spend the time masking out the subjects / faces, and was only applying global corrections, so in my quest to cool down the background, the subjects also got too cool. Your comment prompted me to get off my duff. What do you think of this version. I slightly darkened and cooled down the background even more, and yellow-warmed up the subjects with less change applied to the more distant boy because he's somewhat further away and more of a bkgnd figure.</p>

<p>Tom</p>

<p>PS - BTW, a minor correction: I only posted one tweaked version before this one. The very first image that I posted was just a copy of one that Andrew put up.</p><div></div>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>There's a lot more richness in the image, Tom. It looks nice but of course not very accurate.</p>

<p>The funny thing is when I first saw it my eyes immediately noticed the cyanish UV blue tinted cast and as I wrote this post glancing back and forth on my 6000K calibrated display it starts to look acceptable and somewhat more 3D looking. It does take some time for my eyes to adjust to this cast.</p>

<p>I still think that boy on the left needs more yellow in his skin. Still looks maroon tinted.</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>I rarely shoot in overcast outdoor light so I never am quite certain how cool or warm it should look. The image below shows the two I often grapple with when shooting shade and overcast. Both look acceptable but skin favors warm hues and that's hard to put across with a cool WB.</p><div></div>