seeking advice how to get rid of Orangy tone from images

[raihan_malik1]

<p>Hi Everyone,<br>

I'm back again and looking for some valuable tips. I shot a birthday 2 weeks ago, it was in a small resturent illuminated with kinda yellow tangsten lights. The resturent has 2 seperate section and one was a bit darker than the other.<br>

I used d90 with sb 900 and lense used tamron 17-50m and Nikor 80-200m, both 2.8<br>

My exposure was ISO 640, f2.8 and 30-40 S speed, (auto white bal:). I'm not unhappy with the quality as a beiginner but all my images have that orangy tone and i was wondering how i can get rid of it without doing any post process as i'm not a big fan of software.<br>

Attaching 3 links of the images i took and the 4th one is taken by another photographer, just to show you how i can be able to make my images like that. Any tips/advice will be much appreciated. Thanks, Raihan.<br>

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=10150382895281652&set=a.10150382894706652.347319.562526651&type=3&theater">http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=10150382895281652&set=a.10150382894706652.347319.562526651&type=3&theater</a><br>

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=10150382894956652&set=a.10150382894706652.347319.562526651&type=3&theater">http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=10150382894956652&set=a.10150382894706652.347319.562526651&type=3&theater</a><br>

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=10150382910176652&set=a.10150382894706652.347319.562526651&type=3&theater">http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=10150382910176652&set=a.10150382894706652.347319.562526651&type=3&theater</a><br>

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=385482857405&set=a.385482062405.164413.640037405&type=3&theater">http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=385482857405&set=a.385482062405.164413.640037405&type=3&theater</a></p>

[bob_sunley]

<p>Well if you are not a big fan of software, then you will have to live with what the software in the camera decides what to do with the image it recorded. You can have a lot of control over it if you wish, just sit down and have a good read thru the camera manual.</p>

<p>Edit:</p>

<p>You should post your pictures here for comments, just reduce the size to a maximum of 700 pixels in length and post a caption with it so it shows in the thread. </p>

[rossb]

<p>Since you were shooting with the flash and your shutter speed was 30-40 I am wondering if something is out in left field. The camera would have defaulted to 1/60th of a second with the flash turned on. So I would go back and figure out how what might have happened to your shutter speeds. Maybe the flash was not turned on?<br>

For the picture you have already taken (i did not look at them as I do not click on links) I figure you can either live with what you got or adjust the white balance in photoshop which you do not want to do I guess. <br>

I think at CostCo they my have photoshop elements 10 on sale for $49.00. They did last week anyway as I bought a copy. <br>

One thing you can do is learn to adjust your white balance for different situations, such as flash, low ambient light with artificial lighting and such. The different methods of adjusting white balance is in the manual. Also you have the LCD to chimp. You should at least chimp for a few shots to make sure all is well since you can have the tool right there. </p>

 

[rodeo_joe1]

<p>We're not all Facebook members you know Raihan, and therefore can't access your linked pictures. Better to post any pictures inline right here.</p>

<p>However it sounds like the white balance was incorrect. Auto white balance doesn't always work, and it's wise to check the review image on your camera to see if the colour looks right <em>before</em> you go shooting any important pictures. Setting a custom white balance is the best way to get the colour right. All you need for this is a sheet of white paper and to work your way through the instructions given either in your camera manual or on the back of the camera.</p>

<p>Anyway. You'll definitely need to use some software to correct the colour cast of the pictures you've already taken. There's a nice open-source image editor called GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), available for free download from <a href="http://www.gimp.org">www.gimp.org</a><br>

Try auto levels - Colours>Levels>Auto - or the Colour Balance tool - Colours>Colour Balance>Red/Cyan slider toward the Cyan & Blue/Yellow slider towards the blue.</p>

[dwight200]

<p>I've had pretty good results from GIMP using Colors>Auto>White Balance</p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>Ditto what Rodeo said. I have problems with Facebook's philosophy and techniques, and have absolutely no intention of becoming a member. However, I do want to help people with their photography, so pls. put you pix right here on photo.net or on another open site.</p>

<p>WRT technical matters, since I can't see you pix, given your kit and settings, my guess is that you likely experienced what is called "mixed lighting", ie, correctly color balanced flash + very warm tungsten. The latter will predominate for objects further from the camera/flash. There has been much written on this as it is not immediately obvious how to work around this problem. A quick Google search on this phrase will turn up much on this topic.</p>

<p>However, in summary, the best and simplest approach to getting a better balance in this situation is probably to put the little orange gel filter that came with your sb900 in front of the Fresnel lens, and set the WB in your camera to tungsten. You'll be amazed at the difference that will make, assuming there is no third source of light in the room (eg, no window light, just flash and tungsten).</p>

<p>HTH,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p> </p>

[raihan_malik1]

<p>Hi Everyone,<br>

Thanks for the tips. I didn't put my images here as I was told not to in another post couple of months ago, i was advised just to share the links, anyway I'l try to share 2 pics, hope it will work out this time. Yes definately i'l try all the possible methods you told me as there's another shooting coming up end of this month and i dont want this orangy pics again.</p>

<div></div>

[bruce_brown]

<p>Raihan: You might also try shooting a few TEST SHOTS before the action begins ... on your LCD you can pull the D90 off auto white bal and set it FOR THAT SITUATION ... the yellowish is almost certainly the tungsten lighting ... FWIW I would also do whatever you have to do (higher ISO) to close your lens down a stop or two.</p>

[raihan_malik1]

<p>At Bruce,<br>

How far i can go max with ISO as i noticed it becomes grainy when i put it let's say in 800? Thanks.</p>

[eric_arnold]

<p>i never use Auto WB with flash. i usually set the WB to "flash" with flash, and "tungsten" when shooting with no flash under that kind of lighting. since lighting conditions vary, you want to dial in the correct WB setting before you start shooting. shoot a few test shots before the event starts and adjust accordingly. with a D90, you can shoot clean up to about 1600 ISO, but if you're also using flash, you could get overexposed/soft images from that combo. never raise ISO unless you absolutely have to, but Bruce makes a good suggestion to shoot at f/4 if possible. you would possibly get sharper pics by shooting at a higher shutter speed, at least 1/60. sometimes at slower speeds, there can be a little but of subject movement. also, using an 80-200 indoors in low-light is more challenging than a 17-50. at 200mm and 1/30, for instance, you will almost certainly have some motion blur. for best results in that kind of lighting, i would just use the shorter lens. oh, fyi, all those FB links are dead.</p>

[bob_sunley]

<p>Raihan, that is a perfect picture for asking about problems, you left the exif information intact, sized it properly and added the caption so it shows inline. Thankyou.</p>

<p>More than likely you were asked to post links to other peoples photos. If you want to attach a second photo, do it in a reply, as you can't attach two images at the same time.</p>

<p>At 1/30 sec shutter speed, the camera was just using flash for a light fill. A 1/125 shutter speed would have forced the flash to do more fill, reducing the orange tint from the available lighting. </p>

 

[eric_arnold]

<blockquote>

<p>At 1/30 sec shutter speed, the camera was just using flash for a light fill. A 1/125 shutter speed would have forced the flash to do more fill, reducing the orange tint from the available lighting.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>that's why i almost always use manual flash settings. but Bob is right that you could have gotten away with a much higher shutter.</p>

 

[Kent Shafer]

<p>I recently struggled with a similar situation. Tom Mann's advice is right on the money—using one of the orange filters that comes with the SB-900 will balance the flash with ambient tungsten light and give the best results. With cameras that can detect the filter on the flash (including the D90), setting the white balance to either Flash or Auto will give the correct white balance for the the flash/filter combination. See page D-36 of the SB-900 manual.</p>

<p>(At the location where I was shooting, the ambient lighting turned out to be those curly flourescent bulbs that mimic tungsten. They had a low color temperature, like tungsten, but a much greater green component than real tungsten. Using the stronger orange filter on the SB-900 was the best I could do, but areas that didn't receive much light from the flash turned out a bit on the green side. Maybe someday Nikon will produce a flash filter that matches these modern warm flourescent bulbs.)</p>

[rodeo_joe1]

<p>Hi Raihan. I took the liberty of trying to correct your picture with the following result. Not sure if it's absolutely correct since I don't know what colour suit the man was wearing. Anyway it certainly looks a bit better than the original.</p>

<p>I used the Auto levels option, but the other tip of "Colours>Auto>White Balance" gave almost identical results. The levels tool also has a mid-grey colour-picker tool that you can simply place over an area that you know to be neutral grey. This can work even better IME.</p><div></div>

[stevenseelig]

<p>I would guess your white balance is off. What color is his shirt? Does it have white in it? If yes, correct that to pure white with white balance it will look much better, although with mixed light sources it can be difficult. Or in the future use a grey card to find the correct white balance and use that information. This is very easy to do in Aperture or Lightroom. Shooting RAW helps substantially.</p>

[raihan_malik1]

<p>At Steven, its a white shirt with grey n brown stripe on.<br>

Rodeo- I tried the auto level feature in GIMP but seems your version is way better than mine, could you please explain me the steps?<br>

Thanks everyone for ypur time and all these valuable tips, hope that will make my life lot easier and today i learned something. A special thanks to Joe to give me that free sftware, i tried n it works, all i need to know how to excute them in a proper way. Thanks again. Raihan.</p>

[raihan_malik1]

<p>** I mean special thanks to Rodeo Joe...same person :)</p>

[gdw]

<p>Before the fact, as mentioned previously, get a software that will handle you NEF files and shoot RAW. That will give you a white balance tool that makes the correction much, much simpler.</p>

<p>After the fact: I applied the White Point tool to the shirt, the Black Point tool to his hair. That helped but didn’t totally solve the problem. Orange is a combination of red and yellow so in Color Balance I applied additional Cyan, the compliment of red, and additional Blue, the compliment of yellow. Additionally I lightened the photograph. Probably not perfect but closer than your original orange. Surprisingly this comes closer than most attempts that I have seen at correcting white balance on JPG images. It us usually much more difficult than this one. All of these tools should be available in your software.</p><div></div>

[doc444]

<p>I would suggest a free program called picasa you can google it and it is a free download using the eye dropper and clicking on some thing white in the photo like a shirt or wall or anything it will adjust the color balance</p><div></div>

[stevenseelig]

<p>Gary's adjustments look pretty good. The Picasa ones, to me, are really not acceptable.. .way to green for my tastes.</p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>a) Separate cc adjustments to foreground and background incl. color temp and saturation/vibrance.</p>

<p>b) the foreground looks slightly blurred, so I tried a bit extra sharpening of the man's face, but this is rarely successful. Unfortunately, as in this case, the attempt often looks "processed".</p>

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

[Ray House]

<p>With the Nikon D90 you also have the option of adjusting color balance in camera. The information is in your manual.</p>

[paul_k1664875007]

<p>If you shoot with articificial light with the settings you used, it's inevitable the ambient articficial light (color temperature probably between 3100K and 3400K) will mix in the picture you are shooting (probably with the WB set at Flash 5400K) and give the orangy cast you noticed.</p>

<p>Unless you want to spend (a lot of) time behind the compter, the solution is hardware rather then software, as otherwise the color of the area's lit with the flash will be changed in a way that becomes just as unnatural as the orange cast.</p>

<p>If I'm correct, the SB900 comes with hard plastic filters, one of which is orange (amber). I believe that when this filter is put on the camera, the WB of the camera is automatically changed to tungsten ( I use SB800's and SB600's so I don't know from personal experience)</p>

<p>If the camera does not change the WB automatically, set the WB of the camera on tungsten (the lightbulb icon). If you now shoot the picture, the WB of the ambient light and the flash will be about equal, and the picture will be 'normal'.</p>

<p>I personally use this technique a lot when shooting catwalk and having to use flash (although I simply tape a piece of Lee filter on my flash)</p>

<p>http://www.pbase.com/paul_k/fashion_night_20110906<br>

http://www.pbase.com/paul_k/famiss_20110415</p>

<p>Of course you can't shoot this way if the ambient light is daylight as then the pictures will have a blue cast</p>

[rodeo_joe1]

<p>Hi again Raihan.<br>

The image window of GIMP has a series of menus across the top - "File", "Edit", etc. The menu you need for any colour corrections is (unsurprisingly!) the one called "Colour". Click on the "Colour" menu and various other options will drop down. One of the most flexible of these is the "Levels" tool, and the window you get when you click on Levels is shown below.<br>

Auto levels works well to correct slight underexposure and minor colour problems. There are also the three eyedropper symbols which can be used to set a white, grey and black point in the picture. I've found the grey (centre) one to be most useful for correcting colour faults.<br>

First you identify something in the picture that should look neutral grey - maybe part of the man's suit in your picture. Place the grey eyedropper over what should be a grey area and left-click the mouse. The levels tool will instantly adjust the whole picture to make that area neutral grey. If it doesn't look right you can simply pick another area and click again. When it looks right click on "OK" and use File>Save AS to save the picture under another name. If you don't change the name your original picture will be overwritten and further changes will be limited.</p>

<p>The picture below shows the result of using the grey eyedropper on the suit of the man in your original picture, together with a small amount of lightening also applied in levels.</p><div></div>

[dan_south]

<p>You can set your WB to Flash, as someone mentioned, but that will only work for subjects that are illuminated primarily by the flash, as is the gentleman in the sample photo. The background will still be orange, because you're dealing with a mixed lighting situation.</p>

<p>If you ever shoot an indoor event WITHOUT flash, the Expodisc will let you set a custom WB value that will match the lighting in the room. It's easy to use and effective, but it's not going to help if flash is your main lighting source.</p>

<p>I would suggest that you find some software that you don't mind using and buy yourself a gray card. Have someone hold the gray card in front of them for one photo, and then use that image to set the WB value for all of the shots that you take in the same room at the same time.</p>