Photo color consistency across different scenarios

[melandkeifspics]

<p>I'm wondering how some wedding photographers manage to make all their images look consistence in terms of color and tonalities for pictures taken throughout the day. For example, when I look at a wedding in a magazine, all the images have the same feel and colors whether the shot was taken indoors or outdoors, sunny or cloudy, in the morning or during the reception, at the bride's hotel or in the church.</p>

<p>How did they achieve that level of consistency from image to image? In other words, how did they make it clear that all images were from the same wedding and processed by the same photographer? As a newbie it is easy to get lost in the world of Lightroom and all the presets and sliders available at your finger tips. How can I keep things under control and looking similar? I found that even when applying a preset to two different shots (even if it is still of the bride and groom), the results come out very different. Is it normal to have to constantly tweak all images, ripping your hair out in the process, until they look the same? Please tell me there is an easier way.</p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<p>Um. My (amateur) workflow for a wedding tends to including shooting everything in raw, then using the eye dropper to set the colour temperature based on the bride's dress (assuming that it was supposed to be white). Then the illumination colour doesn't really matter.<br />

<br />

More detailed tone than that is another matter, but in terms of colour matching, I'd hope it was roughly that simple. :-) I'm sure experts can give more detail - I'm not really protecting a brand with my "look"!</p>

[danny_low]

<p>The answer is Photoshop, Photoshop and Photoshop. The photographers shoot RAW and process the images through an editor, usually Photoshop, that will adust color temperature, exposure, remove wrinkles, etc. There are also specialized editing programs specifically intended for wedding photos that will smooth out wrinkles, remove skin discolorations and all the other edits that make couples look so perfect. That is why they all look so perfect and the same. The photographers are using the same editing programs and procedures on the photos.</p>

<p>Danny Low</p>

 

[James G. Dainis]

<I>Note: This thread was forwarded here from the Beginner's forum. The Beginner's forum moderator felt that more in depth answers could be forthcoming here.</I>

[shawn_mertz]

<p>being close to perfect when you click the shutter<br>

plus What Danny said adding too that learning lighting, color theory, and practice, practice, practice.</p>

[William Michael]

<p>Previous to 2004, we were still shooting film. We'd usually shoot a grey card and also colour patches <strong><em>in shot</em></strong>, for the first frame of any new lighting scenario - that's was for the Colour Lab Technician’s reference.</p>

<p>In 04 we majorly cut over to digital and we kept the same procedure – that worked for us.</p>

<p>Learning more about procedure we then began balancing the Colour Temperature in the camera to the grey card (i.e. pre-setting the CT to °K for each lighting scenario). Though we were not using the JPEG as thre file for the final, we did use the JPEG as a preview sometimes this procedure did have an effect on the time taken Post Production of the files, for any one lighting set.</p>

<p>I think (never really investigated it) that AWB became a tad better and more refined during 2000: between 2009~2012 we (mostly always) just set AWB but still shot the grey card / colour patches in shot, for the first frame of each lighting scenario, and the AWB was reasonably of these later model cameras was very good at providing reasonable JPEGS as [review file when we needed to do that.</p>

<p>In all cases the Grey Card and Colour patches shot in the first frame of each lighting set was worth the effort for us: the fellow who now owns that business does not follow that procedure – I don’t know if that has affected his post production time and I am not sure of he has trouble keeping continuity of some hues of green and purple (especially Bridesmaids’ or Mother’s dresses).</p>

<p>Correct exposure, is quite important to more easily keep the SKIN tones and DRESSES in colour continuity between different lighting scenarios: I think this is sometimes overlooked.</p>

<p>WW</p>

[melandkeifspics]

<p>I guess it does make sense to try and match the bride's skin tone or wedding dress as a step in ensuring your images can be edited to have the same mood and feel, second to ensuring your exposure and white balance is properly set. Is this the technique you all use?</p>

[ilkka_nissila]

<p>First, you can adjust the white balance to taste and to match the color roughly from image to image in the raw conversion software. After that, you can measure color at key points (e.g. facial skin) with the eyedropper in Photoshop, and make sure the skin tone is reasonable based on the numbers. There are some guidelines in the book Professional Photoshop for color correction of skin (as well as other things) but many of the example images are not such great quality (film originals, and not so good ones). You can also find other references for skin tone numbers. The techniques described in the book are useful and illuminating. You can, e.g., do the correction by adjusting curves individually for each color and monitor the RGB and CMYK values in the various parts of the face.</p>

<p>And finally there is personal judgment - the images should look good to you as a whole; numbers can't guarantee that but they are helpful. It is important to realize that color is affected by and seen relative to the environment - the human brain tends to increase luminosity and color contrasts to amplify and help identify features and there is also a kind of automatic white balancing going on in the brain and finally, to make things even more complicated, memory of objects is involved as well. The images may not look quite the same on one day from the next, as the human brain is always changing. I think the best method is to have some kind of balance between subjective judgment and looking at the numbers to get a good overall look and match the images to each other. I would do this for the formals especially, and the most important images of the day. For images that are shot in difficult environments such as in colored environments, going by the numbers can get you in the right ball park. </p>

<p>I think making test prints is a good idea as eyes tend to adopt to the color and tone of images shown on a monitor, and getting the print right is a little more demanding (but if the print is correctly made (with profile for the paper) and if the monitor is reasonably high quality and calibrated, the image that looks good on paper should look also good on the monitor, so you don't have to make separate versions for each).</p>

 

[William Michael]

<p>I think that personal judgement (of the photographer or photo-finisher) is very important as an ingredient to the final product - and within that personal judgement should be an assessment of the (general and expected) viewing conditions of the Client.</p>

<p>For example if we are making a coffee table Album that is to sit a large windowed and light filled room and the Wedding was mainly outdoors during Spring - I would generally mute the contrast and vibrancy a tad down from what I might use as "normal". But within that discretionary choice, there would still be colour consistency thought the album - which is what the main question is about. </p>

<p>WW<br>

</p>

 

[savagesax]

Are you using auto white balance? I never do. Perhaps that will help. Simple things such as flash fill, when people are in the shade will change the color tones from perhaps 7200 to 5500 Kalvin. This also depends on the time of day, such as the morning, afternoon light, to evening light.

 

It may sound weird that I can't give you more advice, other then you needing to practice assorted lighting situations. Depending on light situations the KALVIN (lighting range) can vary from around 2900 to as high as 7800 just in one wedding. With my camera I have presets for the assorted lighting conditions. In a nut shell I just press the preset buttons, which saves a lot of time, both while working at the wedding and of course editing.

 

I do very little color adjustments, if any when editing in PS.

 

Check out Kalvin Lighting. It's pretty interesting and amazing. For example your eye can't see the difference in most situations between daylight and late afternoon light, however there is a huge difference. Google...

 

If you have about $300 to $500 to spend Minolta has a meter that measures lighting. Check out KEH for a used one. It's a really cool meter and lot's of fun to play with.

[shawn_mertz]

<p>You could use a service for basic color correcting. My lab does color, brightness for a dime per file. there are many similar services i've seen with varying levels of service. I have thought about cleaning out the garbage then send to my lab for correction then when i get it back do additional work that suits my style. Never have because correction isn't that hard, it wouldn't save me enough time. </p>