Peggy on a November Afternoon

--Lannie

Underexposed, which results in a lot of noise. Blue channel is clipped a bit. I did some noise reduction, rebuilt the blue channel and fixed the white balance. IMO, this is an interesting image that needs to be better served in the PP department.

EDIT: EXIF indicates exposure bias of -2 stops! Why?

Thanks, Les.  Yes that is much better, although not necessarily more accurate in terms of the skin tones.  Knowing that is as much a problem of memory as anything else--and I can verify nothing in that regard, but her skin is not quite as orange as you have rendered it.  I have played only with brightness and color balance in my own manipulations to get it to this point.  I did not touch channels or white balance.  I can go back to see if I also shot RAW that day.  I might not have.

In any case, the entire sequence was massively underexposed, and it took quite a bit of effort to bring the photos up to where I have as posted.  I am not sure why.  I did not deliberately adjust the exposure bias, for example. 

There is a LOT that I do not know about PP, in any case, and I prefer your version whether the color accuracy is dead-on or not.

--Lannie

Les, again, playing only with color balance and levels, this seems perhaps a closer approximation in terms of skin tones to me--but my memory is not that good.  It was a shaded lot with lots of trees, the sun was getting low, and the woman's origins include native American as well as Asian Indian, mixed in with strong Scottish genetic roots, among who knows what else.

I am a little puzzled as to your analysis of the blue channel, but you are the more accomplished photographer.  I also do not know how to "rebuild" the blue channel or to diagnose it in the fist place as in need of such, much less how to adjust the white balance from a JPEG.  In short, I don't know anything.

Anyway, here is my best take on it, to the best of my memory.

Your version certainly "pops' more, but again I cannot be certain about color fidelity.  I am sure that mine is not correct.

How do you rebuild a channel?

--Lannie