The B&W cure

leebase

I wasn't all that thrilled with the colors I got shooting outdoors last weekend...so I converted the photo to B&W....I've found that many times when I like a photo but am not thrilled with the colors...converting to b&w can help.

I added grain to the photo to give it a more "authentic" feel.



Original color:


Lee

rutt

I'm a well known curmudgeon on this topic. I'd much rather figure out what the color problems are and fix them just convert to B&W. B&W has it's place, certainly, but I don't think it can actually fix problems. This is a very nice family portrait. It would be nicer in color; the problem is that you don't the color it's in. The reason is that it has a cyan cast.

What about this version:



I did this with CMYK curves:



I saved the actual PS curves and you can pick them up at http://www.chezrutt.com/rutt/bw_solution.acv

Learning to do good color correction in general is like a life's work, but this particular image had some things that made it easy. It has a white spot (the headband -- it's a good guess this is supposed to be really white), it has a black spot (the deep shadows of the down jacket). It has lots of flesh which really needs to be more yellow than magenta and far less cyan and even less black.

Baldy has written a little howto which might get you started. Or you can go straight to the source, bite the bullit, and read the first 3 chapters of Dan Margulis' Profiessional Photoshop. See http://www.ledet.com/margulis/articles.html

Remember the life's work from above? Really understanding everything Dan has to say is that life's work. But understanding enough to fix the color in this particular shot (and about 90% of the shots with color cast problems) is can take only a few afternoons.

leebase

Just saw this post....fantastic! The headband was pink, not white....but still...I like the colors. I'll look at the tutorial you linked to.

Lee

rutt

leebase wrote:

Just saw this post....fantastic! The headband was pink, not white....but still...I like the colors. I'll look at the tutorial you linked to.

Lee

Ah that makes sense. But I didn't have to bet the image on the white headband because of all the fleshtones. The thing that is really important in this picture is to get the those right. And the black point, of course. So in this case two out of three wasn't bad. You could redo and leave a little magenta and yellow in the headband for the pink (I think that actually happened in the course of getting the flesh right.)