Color Cast Issues

beline · March 1, 2007

Shooting Miss America this year was a learning experience, to say the least.

I tried a bit of everything, Auto White Balance, this many Kelvin, that many Kelvin. The lighting was absurd up there on stage, the first night of photographs was just a mess... But then I got it...

Anyway, here are a few shots from the first night. The first few with the cast, the second few... an attempted correction...

Feedback...

beline · March 1, 2007

so... thanks...

edgework · March 1, 2007

beline wrote:

Shooting Miss America this year was a learning experience, to say the least.

I tried a bit of everything, Auto White Balance, this many Kelvin, that many Kelvin. The lighting was absurd up there on stage, the first night of photographs was just a mess... But then I got it...

Anyway, here are a few shots from the first night. The first few with the cast, the second few... an attempted correction...

Feedback...

You've attempted to counter the overwhelming red by flooding it with cyan. The highlights in the skin are reading 28C 12M 29Y. Ordinarily, skin at that value level would have about 7-9C and 28M. You've attacked the red but only succeeded in destroying it which leaves your images washed out and weird.

Clearly a conventional approach won't work. Your colors aren't really horrible; skin is lacking cyan but there's some there to work with. The problem is that there is no detail in the dress. Magenta/green are almost totally plugged up and the place you'd usually look for it, the yellow channel, is worse.

Try copying the green channel into a layer above your base image and put it in Screen mode. That will leave the reddest areas alone and force any other areas that are lighter to pull farther away from the red—anything to bring in some contrast). I used an opacity of 60%-70%. Then, I copied everything into a third layer and put that in multiply mode, at 28%, which pushes the darker areas even darker, while affecting the lighter areas less. The final result is an improvement, I'd say.

pathfinder · March 1, 2007

I agree.

digismile · March 1, 2007

I think they came out pretty good. Still appear to have a bit of a cast, but very hard when you have multilple light sources.

I'm not sure what method(s) you used, but I tried one of your photos and found it fairly easy to adjust. There are a number of threads that discuss color casts in some detail. If you are able to shoot in RAW, the whole process can be a lot simpler

. Shooting in RAW with a grey card is even better.

My easiest pp method to try first is this (I'm assuming that you are using Photoshop ...). If the color cast affects the majority of the image, this can do 95% of the job for you, very quickly and easily:

1. Make a new layer copy of the image (Ctrl-J).
2. Blur the copied layer using Filter->Blur->Average (for the images you show here, this should change the entire layer to be an orangy red).
3. Inverse the color of this layer (Ctrl-Shft-I).
4. Change the layer blending mode from Normal to Color.
5. Reduce the opacity to taste (for your first image I used about 33%)

This was pretty good but the color still seemed a bit off. I used a Color Balance Layer, set for highlights, and reduced the magenta by about -24. These adjustment layers can be used to adjust other similar shots, saving a bit of production time.

BTW, The new CS3 has the ability to change White Balance on jpegs, much like RAW images.

However, I must say that I am less bothered by any remaining color cast in your images than the lone head at the bottom of the screen. But maybe it just wasn't possible. Other than the head, I like the basic comp of the shots.

Art Scott · March 2, 2007

Could we see the EXIF data for your shots....I use Km 7D's and these look really noisey...and over exposed....I am just very curious as to all the settings.

Thanx

beline · March 2, 2007

The photos are of Kate Michael The EXIF is there.

Color Cast Issues

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