I'm stuck - need help on wedding photos

Quitarita

Hi guys,

I hope you can help me. I have lots of photos from our wedding back from June '05 that I still haven't posted or printed! Eeeks!

I did the mistake of suggesting to my photographer friend that I could handle some post processing tweaks and printing. Lots of the photos came out great and didn't need help but there are several of the 'formal' shots that have this color cast or are over exposed? They were taken around 1 pm on a sunny afternoon in the shade.

My husband thinks I'm crazy and he thinks they look fine (maybe he's responding to my terrible PS work?!:doh). Anytime I've done tried to address the color by color balancing and doing the 'pop' tutorial, I make the shot worse (too washed out, too blue, too blown out...).

Or am I overthinking it?

What would you do, if anything, to improve the color in these shots:


this one I know I need to crop:


If anyone has any suggestions on workflow that would be much appreciated too. I have PS and Aperture (just starting to learn it). I've read just a little about i2e but don't know it that would be overkill to get that too. My favorite subjects to shot are people.

In general, I seem to just get stuck on my workflow and have lots of doubts and I end up not even getting my work (or wedding pictures!) out there.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Gracias,

BillyVerden

Too Blue...
Hi... nice photos. Looks like a very happy day.
But i noticed it had a bit of a blue tint in there.
I took as much out as i could and had to guess on the color of some
things after i took the blue out. I also increased the saturation some.
I didn't do any sharpening. I think if you take the blue tint out you
will have some nice prints.

But they are nice photos to begin with. So you don't need to do much.

Tanuki

If you have the "adjust color for skin tones" available in your version of PS, it's very fast and gives decent results, as you can see from the attachment. Another option is to go in the filter menu and choose a warming filter, say #85 at 25%.

There are much better techniques, but they require more effort. Try these first.

Anthony

Hello... Like other people, I adjusted the slight blue tint. Then I darkened the gentlemans head a little (he has a similar hairstyle to mine!) slightly tweaked saturation overall and did some sharpening on details such as the lace,flowers, eyes,etc.

Really the pictures don't need a great deal doing to them.

Anthony.

Quitarita

Hola!

Thanks for taking on my case and for showing me some possiblities.

I'm going to go home tonight and try it again and I'll repost to see what you guys think.

Funny, I kept on trying to take the green out of picture instead of the blue. lol!

I'm also going to look for the 'adjust color for skin tone'. Where should it be if I have it?

Thanks again Anthony, Tanuki & Billy!

Anthony

Quitarita wrote:

Hola!

[..]

Thanks again Anthony, Tanuki & Billy!

It was pleasure. By the way, are Raychem Inc still in Menlo Park? I worked for their English office in the late 1960's.

Anthony.

Duffy Pratt

You can basically get the colors in the ballpark by setting the white and black points with individual R, G, B curves. That's what I did here, making the man's shirt white, and the darkest part of the bride's hair black. Then I had to tweak the blue curve a bit to get the brides dress white as well and to neutralize as much of her hair as possible. Then I tweaked the green curve up a small bit to kill some magenta in the skin.

When I was done with that, I moved to LAB to get rid of the rest of the annoying blue on the fringe of the Brides hair. But first I made a side trip to CMYK to make an inverted copy of the black channel. I used this, steepened a bit, as a mask in LAB. I did a curve in B to kill the blue in the hair fringe, and limited it both with the mask, and with the Blend if sliders, so it operated only on things in the -B range in the underlying channel.

I did a quick sharpen of the L channel 55, 12, 20. And then decided to desaturate the image just a hair by writing another set of LAB curves flattening the A and B channels.

If you want to learn how to correct like this, I suggest you follow along with the Professional Photoshop reading group on this site. Everything I did either has been covered there, or will be in the near future.

Duffy

Dee

Wow, what a range
of post processing adjustments! Just goes to show how complicated it can be to get it right.

Which version of Photoshop has "adjust color for skin tone"?

Tanuki

Quitarita wrote:

Hola!
I'm also going to look for the 'adjust color for skin tone'. Where should it be if I have it?

In PSE4, it's under the "Enhance" drop down menu. Choose "Adjust Color" and then "Adjust color for skin tone...".

Quitarita

Tanuki wrote:

In PSE4, it's under the "Enhance" drop down menu. Choose "Adjust Color" and then "Adjust color for skin tone...".

I checked CS2 and couldn't find your drop down menu. I did fine some actions online though:
http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/TLRColorEnhance.htm#

Is this sort of what you were using?

jfriend

Tried as simple an approach as possible

Quitarita wrote:

Hi guys,

I hope you can help me. I have lots of photos from our wedding back from June '05 that I still haven't posted or printed! Eeeks!

Duffy's take on the first one is very nice. I thought I'd take a different approach and see what can be done with very simple techniques. Because I've learned lots of different techniques over the last few years, I am as guilty as anyone at taking a relatively simple problem and solving it in a complex way. I love this photo both because it's a really neat composition and because it can be fixed with very simple techiques and using only global correction techniques (no manual editing, masking, selecting, etc...).

So, here's what I did:

I started with the image you posted:


Using the info palette in CS2 and the mouse cursor, I examine areas of the photo that should be neutral in color (bride's dress, black hair), etc... A neutral color should have equal R, G and B values. I can see immediately that there's too much blue in the brides dress. Since the dress looks like it probably is supposed to be white, I decide I'll first try one of the simplest corrections possible and see where that takes me.

So, I open up a curve adjustment layer, I select the middle eye dropper (gray point) in the curve dialog box and I click on the white dress in an area between the flower she's holding and her armpit. Wala! The blue seems to have instantly gone away and I like the skin tones a lot better. This is what I have now:


At this point, you could be done with one of the simplest of corrections. The image is already much improved. But, since I'm a bit of a nut and since I have Duffy's prior correction staring me in the face, I figure I'll try a few more simple improvements and see where it takes me.

I decide (and this is totally a personal visual opinion), that the skin-tone could use just a little more red. In CS2, if you look at the info palette in CMYK values over the bride's face, you can see that the Cyan value is a little higher than normal which makes the skin tone a little cooler than it could be. The easiest way to reduce it a little is to add a little more red. So, I create a new curve adjustment layer, switch to the red channel and just pull up the center of the curve the tiniest amount. This is just done to visual taste, though you can learn to watch the CMYK numbers in the info palette. That leads me to this:



Now, I decide that the image could use just a little more pop/contrast. I actually experiment with an S-curve to add contrast, but don't really like the result that gives me as I seem to lose some of the skin softness that I like in this shot. So, I back off from that and figure I'll add a little HIRALOAM sharpening (also known as local contrast enhancement). This is easy to do in small amounts. So, I merge the changes so far to a new layer and bring up the USM dialog. For this image, I pick 10,50,0 as some high radius low amount settings. That gives me this image with just a little more pop. Not a big different, but if you toggle back and forth between them in CS2, you can see some enhancements.


Lastly, I add a little smart sharpening. Since this isn't the high res version, the settings are only Amount = 95, Radius = 0.2 and I set the layer to luminosity blend so no color shifts happen. That gives me this final result:



I hope this simple approach is useful. You could stop after the first step if you wanted.

Quitarita

Anthony wrote:

It was pleasure. By the way, are Raychem Inc still in Menlo Park? I worked for their English office in the late 1960's.

Anthony.

Hi,

Yeah, I just checked on Raychem, and they are still in Menlo Park.
http://www.circuitprotection.com/contactus.asp
Are you an engineer?

Quitarita

jfriend wrote:

Duffy's take on the first one is very nice. I thought I'd take a different approach and see what can be done with very simple techniques.

So, here's what I did:
....
I hope this simple approach is useful. You could stop after the first step if you wanted.

Wow, you guys on Dgrin are so generous!!! I really love this forum and the people on it. I talk about dgrin to people who are not even into photography - I'm just so impressed with everyone. Thank you John for your step by step explainations - it really helps!

BillyVerden

Wow...
after reading everyone elses techniques they used on your photo, i think its best "in my own interest" that i just stay quiet. Lol. But like someone mentioned. It just goes to show how many different ways there are to do something.

Tanuki

Warming Filter

Quitarita wrote:

I checked CS2 and couldn't find your drop down menu. I did fine some actions online though:
http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/TLRColorEnhance.htm#

Is this sort of what you were using?

I had a feeling that "adjust for skin tones" was only in Elements. Here's an alternative option that will be just as simple (hopefully it's available in CS2). Either from the Filter menu or as an Adjustment Layer, use "Photo Filter" with "Warming Filter (85)" and "Preserve Luminosity" is checked. I found that a density of 40% feels about right for your first photo.

Of course there are much better ways to do this with Levels or Curves, but since you stated that you are struggling with those tools then this would be an 80% solution that you should be able to apply.

Good luck. Let me know if this helps.

Mike

Quitarita

my take on the photo
Hi guys,

I'm finally posting up my processed picture based off of everyone's input.
The original:

My processed one:


What I did:
* First tried to do it with LAB - read the first 4 chapters of Dan's book - but I think I was too heavy handed with it (created something way too red) and decided to go back to the basics.
* Followed John's advise and took out the blue color cast by selecting the gray dropper in a curve adjustment layer between the flowers and my arm pit
* Added some red back in by adjusting the red curve up.
* Followed the 'pop' tutorial - though I don't think it popped as much as John's - what is HIRALOAM sharpening?
* Used Scott K's trick to whiten eyes and teeth.
* Sharpened just the eyes, eye brows, mouth, flowers, jewlry...
* Switched to LAB and sharpened just the L channel just a bit (I tend to not like the oversharpened look and lean towards something softer).

I've practiced on this picture a lot and I think it has improved but I'm sure you guys would be able to pick out stuff that I overdid or failed to do.

C&C would be great!

Gracias,

Duffy Pratt

Smugmug is down so I can't see your results now.

Hiraloam stands for HIgh RAdius, LOw AMount. It's a technique used with unsharp mask which has the effect of drawing out local contrast between objects or large areas, and of adding shape. It works well on images that have subtle gradations, rather than lines, to sharpen. It is very useful, sometimes, for faces.

Here's how you would play with it. Pick a picture like a facial portrait. Raise the amount to 500. Now jack the Radius up very high. Try starting at 20 and slide it around. You want to keep some wide detail in the face with this blur, but you also want the effect to look really extreme. (You should try putting the threshold somewhere around 20 as well). When you have the image so it looks like there is some basic modeling in the face and it is still holding some detail, dial the amount down somewhere between 45-75. You will see the eyes pop some more and some shape in areas like the cheeks, but the skin textures will not have changed.

Hope this helps.

Duffy

Quitarita

Duffy Pratt wrote:

Smugmug is down so I can't see your results now.

Hiraloam stands for HIgh RAdius, LOw AMount. It's a technique used with unsharp mask which has the effect of drawing out local contrast between objects or large areas, and of adding shape. It works well on images that have subtle gradations, rather than lines, to sharpen. It is very useful, sometimes, for faces.

Here's how you would play with it. Pick a picture like a facial portrait. Raise the amount to 500. Now jack the Radius up very high. Try starting at 20 and slide it around. You want to keep some wide detail in the face with this blur, but you also want the effect to look really extreme. (You should try putting the threshold somewhere around 20 as well). When you have the image so it looks like there is some basic modeling in the face and it is still holding some detail, dial the amount down somewhere between 45-75. You will see the eyes pop some more and some shape in areas like the cheeks, but the skin textures will not have changed.

Hope this helps.

Duffy

OK - Here's another take with HIRALOAM technique (boy, that's super cool - thanks Duffy for the numbers to play with) and adjusting the B curve in LAB to get rid of the yellow cast I introduced:

Original:


My first posted attempt, on 2nd thought too yellow:


lastest try:




Any closer?

Learning this stuff is fun!!!!

Duffy Pratt

Very nice. You are doing amazingly well. My big quibble with what you have now is that the lighter parts of your hair (still quite dark) are still blue, somewhere from -1 to -11 in the blue channel.

I removed the blue from your hair by building a mask out of the B channel that was limited only to your hair and the dark areas immediately nearby. I applied a curve to darken the area for the mask, then inverted the result. This allowed only your hair and the area that's near black to your right to show through.

Then I made an adjustment curve in LAB to lower the B values, in your hair to zero. (Slight yellow in such a dark area doesn't bother me.) And then I further limited the change with a blend if on the underlying layer where it was B negative.

The only change here is a slight change on the yellow/blue axis to your hair.

Duffy

Quitarita

Duffy Pratt wrote:

Very nice. You are doing amazingly well. My big quibble with what you have now is that the lighter parts of your hair (still quite dark) are still blue, somewhere from -1 to -11 in the blue channel.

I removed the blue from your hair by building a mask out of the B channel that was limited only to your hair and the dark areas immediately nearby. I applied a curve to darken the area for the mask, then inverted the result. This allowed only your hair and the area that's near black to your right to show through.

Then I made an adjustment curve in LAB to lower the B values, in your hair to zero. (Slight yellow in such a dark area doesn't bother me.) And then I further limited the change with a blend if on the underlying layer where it was B negative.

The only change here is a slight change on the yellow/blue axis to your hair.

Duffy

That's super cool. I see blue clearly now that you mention it and you've taken it out. I need to learn the 'blend if' technique. I see it in Dan's LAB book but that's Chapter 7 and I'm only on 4. I think I'll have to skip ahead and see what I can learn.

Thanks so much for your help. I'm gonna try to reproduce what you've done... wish me luck! Thanks thanks thanks!