Color Management for People

RyanS · October 27, 2011

I'm curious what people like to use for color management when shooting people. I've never done this, but I have been reading a lot. It seems there are two main approaches:

1) Camera calibration using Lr/ACR color adjustments.
2) Specific scene/shot calibration using DNG profiles.

I like the idea of having a flexible color adjustment/calibration approach rather than storing a boat-load of DNG profiles. However, if DNG profiles are superior that's fine. I'm not looking to do super-accurate colors here, nearly everything I do ends up sRGB any way. Are white/black balance targets enough, or do you people shooters out there use something more involved? Any particular products or targets giving you nice skin tones? Do you find it slows you down or speeds you up?

I've searched the forums a bit, but frankly - I'm not a very good researcher. Most of the threads seemed to indicate problems or issues with calibration targets, not happy results.

anonymouscuban · October 27, 2011

I'm probably not the right person to be answering this but I use a simple gray card when I shoot people in studio. It's simple and gives me pretty good results. Shoot the person holding the gray card and I'm done. Then in post, I use the custom WB eye dropper in Lightroom, copy the settings and do a batch paste to all th pics from the session.

Joe Dukovac · October 28, 2011

I'm probably not the right person to be answering this but I use a simple gray card when I shoot people in studio. It's simple and gives me pretty good results. Shoot the person holding the gray card and I'm done. Then in post, I use the custom WB eye dropper in Lightroom, copy the settings and do a batch paste to all th pics from the session.

I'm in the same boat as Alex. I use a grey card, usually on any shoot indoors or out, and then in Aperture, I use the White Balance adjustment, use the eye dropper and select the shot with the grey car, click on the grey card and then do a lift and stamp to the rest. If I'm outdoors, then I shoot a grey card for each location because the lighting situation might be different (full sun, shade, mix).

Grey cards are inexpensive, and do a great job at getting your WB on target. The other big thing I find is making sure that your monitor is also colour calibrated so that what you are seeing on screen is also accurate. I use a Spider 3 pro for my calibration on my Mac's and it does a good job without breaking the bank.

Just my two cents.

Thanks,
Joe

zoomer · October 28, 2011

No gray cards.
I always use Auto white balance and it is usually pretty close. When it is obviously wrong I use an eye dropper on something white and adjust to my eye from there.
I spend very little time messing with skin color.
It is another of those things that a person can make very complicated or can keep it simple.

adbsgicom · October 28, 2011

Own a grey card or two. Rarely used. AWB & RAW in the camera and then tweak to taste.

mjordanphoto · October 28, 2011

adbsgicom wrote: »

Own a grey card or two. Rarely used. AWB & RAW in the camera and then tweak to taste.

Yeah, this is what I do as well. I've been quite guilty of keeping skin tones too cool, so I've now started over-warming them, and slowly bringing it back down to what appears "normal" in Aperture - it seems to work well for me now.

Hackbone · October 28, 2011

I can set my camera 5dmkII or 1dsmkII to 5200 and that gets me very close most of the time. In post production I tend to use my eye to my likeness. Sometimes At times I run cool and other warmer.

Overfocused · October 28, 2011

I use generics of these purchased off of Ebay for all WB that I want to get precisely correct. I bought 58mm, 67mm, and 77mm for $2.34/each shipped. All sizes are the same price at the moment on ebay.

http://www.amazon.com/Mennon-White-balance-lens-52mm/dp/B0019BJZ8C

It's pretty fun to WB before taking the cap off... like some magician or something. Ha!

masterofone · October 29, 2011

I always make a custom preset w/b when in studio on my D700. It takes 3 seconds to do and w/b is right on. Outdoors with natural light, auto w/b works great.

Color Management for People

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