Processing help :(

Kinkajou · July 11, 2011

Hey guys... I did this really sweet couple's shoot with some friends. I didn't have any lighting with me because I thought that flash and whatnot would be a distraction when I was really wanted was for them to focus on each other. Anyway, so the result of that is some really loving shots, but they are all green from the yard. Any ideas on how to process something like this (other than a BW conversion)? I haven't been having any luck with these in LR... it's tough because there is all the green, but some of the shadows are on the magenta side. Oy.

I'm totally fine with folks playing around with this image, so go nuts if you feel the need. Thanks!

tenoverthenose · July 11, 2011

So in this frame, most of the light that is hitting the couple is being bounced around from all of the greenery, painting them green. Outside of going to black and white, you'll need to do some masking on the skin and adjust the white balance separately from the background. You will probably also need to desaturate the greens from their skin a bit too. You can do this in LR with the brush tool, but it's probably much faster in photoshop. Some dodging & burning will also help to tame the tonal range.

marikris · July 11, 2011

If you link or post the raw file, some industrious friends might try their hands at it

Kinkajou · July 11, 2011

marikris wrote: »

If you link or post the raw file, some industrious friends might try their hands at it

I forgot to put set my camera to RAW so jpeg is all I've got... did this shoot the morning after I finished a 20-hour drive :-/

Photometric · July 11, 2011

Using photoshop you can probably create a duplicate layer, erase all of the greenery and then work on color balance potentially to remove some of the green. My recommendation would be always use flash to at least get some white light in addition to the ambient light.

divamum · July 11, 2011

I had problems with a redhead I shot outside - her hair turned green from the reflected foliage.

If you don't want to use (or don't have) PS, you can get some improvement in LR. In my case, adding red didn't work - it just made the reds in the scene too strong and looked horrid. BUT... by adjusting the yellows away from the green spectrum and towards the reds and then lightening (luminance up) and desaturating it a bit, I managed to get the hair in the ballpark, and it didn't affect the other colours in the scene nearly as much as other alterations I tried. I could then set the WB for the skin tone, and it looked about right.

Overfocused · July 12, 2011

Color balance in PS is all you need... -7 on magenta/green in shadows, -11 on magenta/green in midtones, and +11 on cyan/red in highlights fixes it pretty well and is short. If you dont have color balance you can try to shift the color channel curves possibly in LR

Kinkajou · July 12, 2011

So i spent another half hour on it this morning with suggestions from above.

Overfocused suggestions:

Masking in PS and so much tweaking that I don't even know what I did anymore and I still don't really like it:

UGH. I hate WB. I really do. And this was the fist batch of photos that I'd sent off for outsourced processing and liked what they did even less. OY.

zoomer · July 12, 2011

Go to colors and reduce the yellow. If you used the highlight tool decrease that. Decrease exposure, increase black point to taste. If still not right click on their skin with the eyedropper, if still messed up try moving the color balance slider to the right slowly and watch the effect.

When shooting in death by green light (green environment in the shade), even the smallest amount of fill flash will do wonders. It doesn't even need to be enough to really show in the photo, it will still get rid of most of the green tints.

Her arm and hand look pretty blown.

divamum · July 12, 2011

Kris -

Hope you don't mind, but I had a crack at it (let me know if you want this taken down and I'll do so immediately). I don't claim it's perfect (and I made no tweaks other than colour/WB - no contrast/exposure etc adjustments), but I think it's somewhat improved over the original.

I did it in LR - took less than 5 minutes.

Here's the order I tweaked the colours, with the LR settings in view (sorry small - made collage in Picasa and couldn't get it bigger for some reason - here's the X3 link so you can look at the settings larger if you want)

And here's the original + my version side by side:

tenoverthenose · July 12, 2011

Here's my super quick & lazy edit. Two mins. It's pretty neutral in color, my preference would be to warm it up a bit from here.

When shooting, remember that your subject will take on the color of whatever the light is bouncing off of. Even if you don't want to shoot with lights, just taking a black blanket, umbrella cover, etc (or white for more fill) will remove the color cast.

bobcool · July 12, 2011

Here's my go inside LR3:

divamum · July 12, 2011

On my monitor, I think on reflection (no pun intended!), on this monitor I like Bobcool's the best; mine could have used just a tad more warmth. FWIW, I used the guy's ponytail holder to get in the ballpark for a WB - it's kind of gray...

MammaPaparazza · July 12, 2011

BobCools looks great on my monitor!

Kinkajou · July 12, 2011

Thanks so much, guys! I'll have another look when I get home and have a better monitor

I think I'll definitely take the blanket idea to heart and make sure that I bring a white-ish blanket with me next time to help bounce some clean light back up from the ground, rather than green

bobcool · July 12, 2011

Believe it or not, I used his shirt for the eyedropper! This made their skin immediately warm up, and I then I did this:
- adjustmented exposure to -.70
- slid recover to 39
- slid blacks to about 16
- adjusted vibrance to +11
- then on the adjustments panel (HSL/Color/B&W) I completely slid the magenta channel to -100 and the yellow channel to -18
- I also added a little sharpness, and that was about it

Hope this helps!

divamum · July 12, 2011

Ah, ok - I didn't adjust blacks/exposure or anything except colour - that explains what I'm seeing in yours. Also, YES "recover" is a GREEEEAAATTT tool to boost some oranges/warm things up - I use that quite a lot, even though in my quickie edit for this I didn't think to add it!

bobcool · July 12, 2011

Yep, I'm loving Lightroom and I rarely fire up Photoshop any more except for major edits/removals/custom actions...

zoomer · July 12, 2011

Anytime you have trouble with bright greens take the yellow out. Bobcool looks good.

Qarik · July 12, 2011

also don't forget about monotone conversions on the worst offending shots.

Processing help :(

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