I'm a little confused here. The enhancements in sharpness and detail are very impressive and I hope to learn a few things by studying the detailed example. But as to color casts -- why would you override the lighting director's intent?

Edit: Aw nuts, how did I manage to resurrect a two-year-old thread? Sorry...

Originally Posted by momwac I'm a little confused here. The enhancements in sharpness and detail are very impressive and I hope to learn a few things by studying the detailed example. But as to color casts -- why would you override the lighting director's intent?

Because we don't see the scene the same way we see the picture of it. If I left the cast the picture would look very blue and wrong after I enhanced the color later in the workflow. And our memory is definitely different from what the camera captured.

Here is a little theory of mine. Our visual system is powerful enough at neutralizing colored light to allow us to gauge whether a person has healthy skin tone. That means that at least some of people's flesh should be more yellow than magenta and neither green nor blue. When I want to show a cast, I let some flesh vary from the rule of thumb, but if it all varies, than the shot doesn't look right.



This is from Balanchine's Serenade at Boston Ballet. This ballet traditionally uses blue light and I wanted to show it. But if I don't adjust the cast enough to have some healthy flesh tones, it looks like a cast instead of colored light.

Here is a different example.



Kathleen Breen Combes, Giselle, Boston Ballet


This is straight out of the camera jpeg with auto white balance (I do have the raw). Let me tell you a few things about this scene before I continue. The subject is dancing the part of The Queen of the Wilis. She is a sort of ghost, the spirit of a dead girl betrayed in life by a man. The scene is moonlit. To convey this, the traditional lighting is very very blue. The dancer wears heavy makeup to convey a deathly pallor. And the dress is actually blue, not white. All this to overcome our visual systems' natural tendency to see healthy flesh tones in such an obviously fit, strong, and young person.

Fine. But does the scene actually look this blue to us? Not to me anyway. I struggled for years about what to do with this shot. I want to show the light, but I want believability. Mikko Nessinen, the artistic director of Boston Ballet suggest B&W, but I thought that wouldn't address the most interesting issue: how to show the light.

Eventually, I did this:



Instead of healthy flesh (she is supposed to be dead) or neutralizing the white dress (it's actually blue) I settled for some color variation so it doesn't look like a duotone. I also used a layer mask to get neutral blacks. I think this conveys the scene as I remember it pretty well.

An interesting side note. I posted this as a case study on Dan Margulis' Applied Color Theory mailing list. A lot of very good prepress people took a swing at it and got very different results. Of all them, I like mine best, but not because it's mine. Seriously, take a look here. It's possible to make this scene look like a healthy person in bright sunlight. Once we learn how to do that, the issue comes down to what we want it to look like, not how we get there.

Hi Rutt,

Can you tell me where this book is available? I just kinda fell into this discussion and have no clue what book is being mentioned. Thanks!

Look for Dan Margulis on Amazon. I recommend staring with the LAB book.