Fixing the WB

Duckys54

Sorry if thread has been made a thousandf times but my searches were to no avial. Last weekend was homecomming and the parents took lots of pictures like always. Well unfortunetly of the pictures I got they came from my parents who were using a Kodak C300 (?I think?). Basically my thinking is if you guys can help guide me through fixing the WB and any other color adjustments I can do the rest on my own.

I am using Photoshop 7.0 and I have had little experience using it except for putting a filter on. When I open it up it says do I want to use the color profile of the picture, convert document's colors to work space, or discard the color profile.

Here's the picture:

arodney

The right answer is almost always use the embedded profile. I'll bet its in sRGB.

IF the WB still looks awful, you'll have to edit the image of course. Doesn't look like the camera provides the Raw file which would make this a heck of a lot easier.

cletus

As Andrew has said, the embedded profile is usually going to be your best bet. As far as making changes to the image once its open, try searching this forum for "color correction". This thread might be a good place to start. Or you might try Baldy's skin tone tutorial.

Edit: now... if we help you with the white balance, you have to explain to us how you wound up with six dates for homecomming!

kirbinster

cletus wrote:

As Andrew has said, the embedded profile is usually going to be your best bet. As far as making changes to the image once its open, try searching this forum for "color correction". This thread might be a good place to start. Or you might try Baldy's skin tone tutorial.

Edit: now... if we help you with the whie balance, you have to explain to us how you wound up with six dates for homecomming!

Don't know how to do it in photoshop, but you could download a trial version of Adobe Lightroom. This is very easy to do in lightroom. There is a slider to adjust whitebalance and tint.

BinaryFx

I'll try to get back with specific advice later on this image, until then this previous thread will help get you started:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=71282

As others have stated, it is usually a good start point to accept/use the embedded profile as the description of the files colour and tone...if you don't like the result, you could make a little white lie (presuming the original profile was correct) and assign a different profile, before making edits (why make things worse when assigning a different profile can help quickly?). So if I knew for a fact the camera processed into sRGB, but the image was a little too dark, I would have no issue with assigning say Colormatch RGB or Apple RGB as a false starting point (in this case false being 'more correct').


Good luck,

Stephen Marsh.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/

steelephotography.com

It is a problem I run into a lot....
and I don't have the book with me here at the office, so I can't give approrpriate credit (I will post later.)

But here is a neat little recipe I learned to fix problem images such as this.

1) Create a new photo filter adjustment layer
2) Select Warming Filter (85), it should be the default.
3) Increase density to 100%.
4) Click on the color sample.
5) Use the color tool to sample an area of the image in which the offending color is most noticeable. I picked the stone steps in the upper of the image.
6) Then you change the A and B channels to negative numbers if they are positive or positive number if they are negative (exact opposites.)
7) Click Ok twice.
8) Then adjust the opacity of this layer until you are satisfied.
9) Flatten the layer.
10) Add a curves adjustment layer, use the shadows picker to set the blackpoint and the highlight picker to set the whitepoint.
11) Flatten and adjust opacity until you are satisfied.

This is the finished product with about 30 seconds worth of effort. This is a hard image to work with because of its overexposure.

I hope this helps. My little "pay it forward gesture" thanking all of those that have helped me through the years on Dgrin.

DS

jfriend

My try
This is my best shot for now. The list of what I've done is too complicated to write up in the time I have at this moment. Something got seriously messed up with one of the color channels or the color profile because it seems hard to believe this could be entirely a white balance in camera miss. The image is both overexposed and obviously way, way too yellow, but it's not uniformly too yellow, much more in the highlights than in the shadows. There are still some odd yellow artifacts in a couple of the dresses that would probably need to be fixed manually.

pyrtek

BinaryFx

pyrtek, I like what you have done with the overall general colour as a starting point (the skin is more green than red though, which is not good), but I personally don't like the extreme contrast...but if one layers your version over the original, and then change the layer blend mode to color one can have both colour and detail.

Can you list the steps, that is sort of the point after all!

I will have to find time to have a go at this myself, as others have stated, there are many issues with this shot that make it challenging for correction.


Sincerely,

Stephen Marsh.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/

pyrtek

BinaryFx wrote:

pyrtek, I like what you have done with the overall general colour as a starting point (the skin is more green than red though, which is not good),

You're right. Returning to the image after a couple of hours makes it quite
obvious. I've fixed that in the attempt below.

BinaryFx wrote:

but I personally don't like the extreme contrast...but if one layers your version over the original, and then change the layer blend mode to color one can have both colour and detail.

I've also addressed this in the version below.

BinaryFx wrote:

Can you list the steps, that is sort of the point after all!

Sorry, you're right! I usually explain my edits very thoroughly. I was simply
in a rush. Having said that, my retouch was so basic, I'm almost embarassed
to explain it. 90% of the "work" was done by a Hue/Sat layer, in which
I reduced the saturation (-57) and increased the lightness (+46) of just the
yellows. This left the image flat, so I increased the contrast with a levels
adjustment (I overdid this in the previous edit, but the one below is better
in that regard). I finished off with slight sharpening (high pass 0.3
radius). Here's the result without the green cast.





Of course, now it has a slight red cast, but I think it looks better.