Can I get some help with color?

adpace · June 12, 2007

The color looked ok at home, but when I got to work and looked at it, it looks quite green / yellowish. What would you recommend I do? What do you all see? One of the computers need the colors tweaked (assuming home pc)? If so, how? Also... is this something I can fix in PSE?

Look at my hands... ick! What are your thoughts??! As always, any c.c welcome as well... but this was just a pic in my house... b/g is bad, etc, I realize that.

Thanks a ton!!!!!

digismile · June 12, 2007

On my monitor and in photoshop, I mostly see too much red. I assume that the door frame is a neutral color and that the icing is white.

Here's my quick stab:

I checked the color of the door, the icing and the hand. I decreased the red highlights, a bit of blue highlight, and increased the green midtones to help the skin color. I think the skin tones could use a bit more work, but this was the 30 sec. fix.

There are a few tutorials on the site that discuss "color by the numbers". This can help when you're not confident of your monitor. It basically ensures that neutrals are neutral and skin colors make sense.

Got to head off to work, just my 2 cents,

adpace · June 12, 2007

digismile wrote:

On my monitor and in photoshop, I mostly see too much red. I assume that the door frame is a neutral color and that the icing is white.

Here's my quick stab:

I checked the color of the door, the icing and the hand. I decreased the red highlights, a bit of blue highlight, and increased the green midtones to help the skin color. I think the skin tones could use a bit more work, but this was the 30 sec. fix.

There are a few tutorials on the site that discuss "color by the numbers". This can help when you're not confident of your monitor. It basically ensures that neutrals are neutral and skin colors make sense.

Got to head off to work, just my 2 cents,

Cool! Thank you. I'll have to look around for the tutorials. Suppose I should have done that to begin with. But if anyone else has any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Thank you, digismile!!

DavidTO · June 12, 2007

If that print looked too green on your work monitor, that means only one thing. Never trust your work monitor, since digi's right, if anything that shot is too red.

So, either calibrate your work monitor or stop trusting it.

Learn how to read the numbers. Even a calibrated monitor can trick your eyes, and the numbers never lie. Start with the skin tutorial in our tutorials section, linked in the navbar at top or in my signature.

adpace · June 12, 2007

DavidTO wrote:

If that print looked too green on your work monitor, that means only one thing. Never trust your work monitor, since digi's right, if anything that shot is too red.

So, either calibrate your work monitor or stop trusting it.

Learn how to read the numbers. Even a calibrated monitor can trick your eyes, and the numbers never lie. Start with the skin tutorial in our tutorials section, linked in the navbar at top or in my signature.

Awesome... skin tutorial... learn the #'s!!! Got it!! THANK YOU!!!! I appreciate it! I'm LOVING this board!!

pathfinder · June 12, 2007

What color was the icing on the cake? Not white, was it? It looks rather pink in your image.

adpace · June 12, 2007

pathfinder wrote:

What color was the icing on the cake? Not white, was it? It looks rather pink in your image.

yes, exactly I guess what the above posters were saying. I see all white (which it WAS white... very white icing), although the ones in the back were chocolate, so maybe it's the dark icing throwing me off? I don't know... I think my hands look yellowish; but I can now see the reddish ya'll are talking about. I have to read the tutorial, b/c now I'm confused and wondering if I'm going colorblind.

And maybe it's just a poor picture with poor lighting?!?

Thank you so much for the feedback from you all!! :ivar

Thanks,

pathfinder · June 12, 2007

I was going to work on your image this evening, but I can no longer see it. Is it still posted, or has it been taken down?

adpace · June 12, 2007

pathfinder wrote:

I was going to work on your image this evening, but I can no longer see it. Is it still posted, or has it been taken down?

Sorry!! I *did* take it down and made changes to it. Here's what I ended up with:

What do you think???

Let me say this though, I think it's AWESOME that you were going to help me and look at it tonight. You ROCK! Thank you!!!

pathfinder · June 12, 2007

Angela,

I think it looks much better than the image I saw this morning.

On my calibrated MAC monitor, the skin tones look pretty good and the icing is less red than previously. It is still not white as it reads positive in the a channel ( which is slightly magenta ) and negative in the b channel ( which is slightly blue) but much less saturated than previously and looks acceptable and believable. RGB readings are about 222, 219, 225 always slightly higher blue than red than green.

LIke DavidTO pointed out earlier, always look at the numbers - either in RGB or LAB or CMY - to really tell if the colors are what they are supposed to be. Numbers do not lie.

MACs come with a free program called Digital Color Meter that lets you read each pixel seen on the screen in RGB or LAB; that is how I read your cake icing pixels. Or you can load the image into Photoshop and find the data there in the INFO palette. There is probably a program available in Windows that will do the same, but I am not aware of one on the tip of my tongue.

BinaryFx · June 13, 2007

pathfinder wrote:

LIke DavidTO pointed out earlier, always look at the numbers - either in RGB or LAB or CMY - to really tell if the colors are what they are supposed to be. Numbers do not lie.

I subscribe to this belief myself, the masterwork on the subject can be found here:

http://www.ledet.com/margulis/PP7_Ch02_ByTheNumbers.pdf

But there are always caveats with the contextually sensitive human visual response, that is very different from the truth of the info palette (the contrast and colour examples always amaze me):

http://www.purveslab.net/seeforyourself/
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/index.html

Sincerely,

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

pathfinder · June 13, 2007

Dan's Book on Color Correction, "Professional Photoshop, Fifth Edition" should be familiar to most posters here.

We recently did a chapter by chapter book review of his more recent update of that book, here

Cool links about optical illusions and human perception

adpace · June 19, 2007

Thank you so much for the links and feedback!! I really appreciate it!! You guys rock!

manta1900 · June 19, 2007

I had to try... and fail (snif)
What about something like that?

Can I get some help with color?

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