Need some Post-process Advice!

jrowphoto

I shot a children's choir holiday concert yesterday in a church. I have a Nikon D700, and shot from ISO 2000-3200, and shot in RAW+JPG.

I originally made a preset WB that was fine, but on the cool side (not very soft and very bluish/pale skin tones in testing. I decided on going with the Auto WB, which was warmer, and since in RAW I could always correct later.

Anyway, I would like to use the JPGs in most cases to ease the workflow in getting the shots posted, and to take advantage of the Nikon processing (color, Active D-Lighting, etc). I'm posting two photos here, and would really like advice as to whether I should go with this color, or if I should make it "cooler", color-wise, and probably a more "accurate" WB. What's more "flattering" and a nicer photo for the parents in your opinion?

Any Advice on PP, if I need more processing, vignettes, sharpening, etc. would be greatly appreciated! What do YOU think would make them nicer/better? - John

JPG straight from camera (Auto WB)



JPG with more "accurate" WB, but not as pleasing??



Another straight JPG from the shoot....

sweet caroline

The first JPG looks a little too yellow, in my opinion. I like the corrected white balance better, but you could go slightly warmer. So, maybe in between the two. The second JPG I think is okay straight out of camera.

Caroline

jfriend

Here are some ideas for the first image.

• It definitely looks too yellow to me and looking at the actual color numbers on her face and arms confirms that to be the case. I'd add some blue to balance the skin color better (with a curve). You can alos use the white wall in the background as a reference (though we don't know for sure if it's supposed to be pure white).
• I'd recommend a much closer crop. The partial girls on either side of her aren't adding anything to the photo. The extra space above her head can be lessened and you don't lose anything by not having as much in the photo below her waist. It all just draws more attention to her face which is really what the photo is about. The one thing you give up with a tighter crop is a little bit of context of the other girls but I'm not sure you really had enough there to accomplish that .
• In my opinion, the photo is helped a lot by lightening up her face so you can see her eyes more. I used shadow/highlight with a loose mask so it was only affecting her face.
• The red in her dress is a bit overpowering so I'd tone it down a bit so you can see more detail and it doesn't dominate as much. If you ever intend to print, the reds would exceed what most printers are capable of too. I used a hue/saturation adjustment layer and turned down the saturation of the reds.
• This particular image seems to be quite sensitive to viewing it on a profiled screen in color-managed software as it looks much better with accurate color rendition in Safari and Photoshop (which are color-managed).

Here's what I ended up with:

pathfinder

I was shooting a club last night and discovered that what I thought were tungsten lights, actually were the new bulblike screw in flourescent replacements for tungsten bulbs that we are all going to see more and more of.

Needless to say, the images looked green, whether I used Tungsten or Flourescent color balance. AWB seemed to do the best, but I still had to balance off a white paper in ARC.

The reason I bring this up, is that the second image definitely looks a bit green in the "white" lectern in the lower portion of the image. The first image does not look obviously green, because it is very red and warm, but the green channel is a lot higher than the blue also.

Were these shot under flourescent lights perhaps? Not the long tube lights, but the screw in bulb type that are so called "warm white"

John, your white lectern is definitely white ( but favors green just a tiny bit on my screen as I read the pixels ) in your curved image, but she still seems just a touch yellow to me on my monitor? I know she is fair, and blonde, but ......

I agree with the crop also, and the drop in saturation in the red channel.

I think all of the first three images have a yellow green cast, not just yellow. I think that is why the second image is not that pleasing, the yellow is gone, but faint green remains.

jfriend

pathfinder wrote:

John, your white lectern is definitely white ( but favors green just a tiny bit on my screen as I read the pixels ) in your curved image, but she still seems just a touch yellow to me on my monitor? I know she is fair, and blonde, but ......

I agree with the crop also, and the drop in saturation in the red channel.

I think all of the first three images have a yellow green cast, not just yellow. I think that is why the second image is not that pleasing, the yellow is gone, but faint green remains.

I agree that it looks better if you drop the greens just a bit. It doesn't take much, but when you go back and forth before/after, you can see a greenish tint in her blond hair disappear and a little improvement in skin tone.

I bet there's some analysis in LAB that would tell you hair can't be green (unless you've been in overchlorinated swimming pools) and this hair has too much green, but I don't remember how to check that.

A version with slightly less green:

pathfinder

You see it too!
I'll bet there was fluorescent lighting about somewhere.

jrowphoto

Hi again! Just wanted to thank you for your tips and advice. Yes, now thinking back on it it must have been the "new flourescent" lights. They were round recessed lighting, and I assumed tungsten at first, but I think you're right.

You guys are MUCH better at the color correcting than myself. I had 300 photos to upload, so don't have a lot of time for processing each. I usually work in Lightroom now, and don't use photoshop much anymore, so I made a base preset for my RAW files, that got rid of the yellow, and hopefully the greenish too... not as good as yours, but "good enough"! I have the pics up on my site now.

Thanks again for your help! It's very much appreciated!

John