Help Save This Landscape

Llywellyn

So this was one of those "lucky catches" and likely a once-in-a-lifetime deal for me unless I get back near Glencoe in the next 50 or so years.

This is a four-frame stitched pano shot with my dinky P&S from a moving car and through its tinted window. If we could have stopped the car, I think we would have, but we were already behind schedule and I wasn't driving. I'm lucky to have grabbed this shot at all!

The trouble is my P&S likes to give a gold color cast to everything, despite my WB setting. And because it's my P&S, I have only a JPG file and no RAW. :cry I'm hoping someone can help me salvage this better than I've been able to do on my own. Removing color cast manually is hard!

And any other pointers would never go amiss. :thumb

Here's what I started with after minor tweaking in LR:


This is what I managed in PS...


...before I got fed up and started trying to take the easy way out:


Thanks for stopping by, and double thanks if you have any pointers for me! :thumb

jjbong

Llywellyn wrote:

I'm hoping someone can help me salvage this better than I've been able to do on my own.

I noticed that you lost some detail in your first fix attempt, so I assume that you were doing this with RGB curves in the usual manner (Normal blending mode).

In approaching this, I looked at the clouds (you want them to be neutral), the sky (you want it to be blue), and the grass (you want it to be green, with a higher yellow component). The clouds are clearly too yellow, the sky is relatively OK, and the grass is both too yellow and not green enough. I used RGB curves to remove yellow (boost Blue) throughout the image, and to boost Green where the grass is, at the same time trying not to mess up the sky.

This is the result:



These are the curves that did it (I did nothing in the Red channel):



The key thing is that the blending mode of the curves adjustment layer is Color, not Normal. So the curves change the color only, and not the detail.

With this much of a cast I might have tried curves in LAB, but I thought RGB curves would be easier to understand.

A couple of other points. All I did was try to fix the cast, and not otherwise "improve" the picture. There are other things you might want to do to improve contrast or whatever.

Also, do you really want the shot to be this "color correct", or do you want it warmer? There's no objective answer to this - what you do is based on what you saw and what you want to present. A simple way to dial this in is to adjust the Opacity of the Curves layer to something pleasing. Otherwise, you can fiddle with the curves until you get what looks right.

Llywellyn

jjbong wrote:

This is the result:

Wow, that was super helpful and educational. Curves in color mode--so simple and yet so brilliant. Never would have occured to me! Thank you so, so much.

I followed your tips and did indeed keep things a little warm and also tried to improve the contrast:


Does the cast look improved here?

jjbong

Llywellyn wrote:

Wow, that was super helpful and educational. Curves in color mode--so simple and yet so brilliant. Never would have occured to me! Thank you so, so much.

I wish I could claim the credit. I learned it from Dan Margulis in his "Picture Postcard" Workflow.

Llywellyn wrote:

I followed your tips and did indeed keep things a little warm and also tried to improve the contrast:


Does the cast look improved here?

It looks good. The clouds are neutral, the sky is blue, and the grass is green. You've also used the contrast to focus on the sky, rather than the foreground.

When you're working on casts, you can always look at the numbers in the Info palette. In RGB, neutrals are roughly equal values of R, G, and B. If you change the palette settings for the second display from CMYK to LAB, you get something that's generally more useful. Here, neutrals are A and B both close to 0. A very high B value (such as in the clouds of your original image) shows a strong yellow cast. Positive A and B values are warmer, negative are colder. I almost always have the second info palette set to LAB, as it's (to me, anyway) more intuitive in evaluating casts and color corrections generally, even if I'm fixing them in RGB (or CMYK).

But ultimately, it's whether you like it. The numbers help you, for sure. But they don't dictate the result. It amazes me, though, how many pictures that look fine turn our to have a cast, and how much better they look when all you do is remove the cast.

pathfinder

Kerry, There is a small white building in the center of your image - Have you tried using this for a sample to white balance off of in Adobe RAW converter?

Kerry, your edit looks pretty good though.

Llywellyn

Thanks again, John. I've read some about Lab on here and seen the book recommendations. I appreciate your summary--makes me feel as if I'll be jumping into something less scary by exploring it more.

pathfinder wrote:

Kerry, There is a small white building in the center of your image...

This made me giggle because that building was the whole reason I wanted that picture. Unfortunately, using that for my white point blew out the rest of the sky (since it's already blown out on the right). I did not, however, try with masking. I'll give it a look.

Glad to know the edit at least looks better.

pathfinder

The buiding is probably a light gray, use it for a white balance point in ARC, but do not use it for your white point - the clouds should have the white point as you said.

jjbong

pathfinder wrote:

Kerry, There is a small white building in the center of your image - Have you tried using this for a sample to white balance off of in Adobe RAW converter?

This leads to an interesting discussion. I shoot with a grey card (the moral equivalent, I guess, of using a neutral point in the shot in ACR to set the white balance, which I also do occasionally). With either of these techniques, I find often that casts remain, and that they vary over the image. I find I can correct them adequately with RGB curves, so they seem to vary with luminosity.

Is your experience similar? If so, how do you deal with this?

Tango

wowow kerry, nice nice.


>note to self<
*when wanting to stop a car i am not driving have a pre-plan.
1. "i think im going to throw-up!!"
2. "i have to pee, give me that bottle over there!"
3. "AAHHHHHH, my bag is full of spiders!, quick pull over!!!"

Llywellyn wrote:

Wow, that was super helpful and educational. <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/bowdown.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" > Curves in color mode--so simple and yet so brilliant. Never would have occured to me! Thank you so, so much. <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/clap.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >

I followed your tips and did indeed keep things a little warm and also tried to improve the contrast:


Does the cast look improved here?

Llywellyn

pathfinder wrote:

The buiding is probably a light gray, use it for a white balance point in ARC, but do not use it for your white point - the clouds should have the white point as you said.

Ah, I understand. And I even know how to do that in LR (since I don't use ARC). I'll give it a whirl!

Llywellyn

AaronNelson wrote:

*when wanting to stop a car i am not driving have a pre-plan.

If we hadn't just made a stop a few minutes earlier, I might have been thinking more creatively!