Color Correction

[JDługosz]

I took some family portraits using a Canon D60, RAW files.
I'm using Lightroom and Photoshop to work on them, with the goal of making a hard-copy print.
Also, I used florescent photography lighting, with “6400K” bulbs that came with the lights.

My problem is a little yellow tinting in some of the skin tones. My face, for example, looks just fine except for the shadow areas around the eyes, where it seems a little yellow-green, looking almost like a bruise. Meanwhile, my nephew's face looks a bit yellow.

I've used (in Lightroom) the neutral eyedropper on white clothing and grey background, and everything else seems fine. That is, the photo is not over-all tinted. I've tried the different Camera Calibration settings, and tried the temperature/tint sliders to see what difference it made.

Any ideas on how I might improve my photos?

—John

I've attached a detail, saved with an ICC profile of AdobeRGB. Maybe you can see what I'm talking about in this JPEG?

 

[JDługosz]

P.S. The attachment looks “washed out” once posted, so I think the ICC profile isn't handled in the in-message view; it works right if you click on it and view in the pop-up window.

I should also mention that I'm using ProRGB as the Working Space, and I have a DELL U2711 monitor which has a larger gamut then typical consumer monitors though not really in the tier of "high gamut" (high price) monitors. I use Spyder to calibrate the monitor profile, and PS/LR is using the correct profile.

 

[Remote-Medic]

You 'should' be able adjust this out with Curves and Levels JD. Over use of the curves will sometimes blow shadows out in my work.

After a minute Curves and levels adjustment.



(Screen is calibrated too)

 

[JDługosz]

What exactly would you suggest I do with "curves"?

 

[Remote-Medic]

I have lowered the shadow section a bit in Curves:


and adjusted the 'White' part of the levels:


Images attached to show you what I adjusted and where my friend.

 

[JDługosz]

Thanks. I suppose that will be easier using the PS curves than doing it in LR first.
I've never been any good at using "curves".

 

[Tom Mann]

a) First, I strongly suggest that for web viewing and forum discussion, you convert all images to sRGB. The use of color spaces other than sRGB for web postings has caused more problems and disagreements than you can imagine.

IMO, and that of many professional retouchers, there are no skin colors in conventional portraits that will be out of gamut for sRGB, so, if done correctly, conversion to sRGB will sacrifice nothing, but it will ensure everyone who views the image (ie, using different browsers) will see the same colors, at least to the extent that their monitors allow.

b) WRT the slight yellowing around the subject's eyes, are you absolutely sure that it really isn't present, and you simply never looked at him closely enough to see it? Many people have a bit of yellowing there. If yellowing really is present, and not an artifact of your lights, then a bit of quick local color correction will take care of it. To test which it is, I suggest you take a comparison shot of this fellow using strobes. Their output is much closer to a true black body curve than fluorescents.

Tom M

PS - I'm not going to attempt to tweak the colors on this image because I've never seen the subject in person and have no idea what he really looks like.

 

[Evil Nemesis]

I will recommend creating a bit feathered mask then doing a color correction using Hue / Saturation Adjustment layer.. going back and forth between channels in H/S... eventually you'll get what you're looking for..

 

[Tom Mann]

I'm sure I'm "preaching to the choir", but here is a little demo of how much change occurs when an image that is originally in a color space other than sRGB went through some step that used non color managed software on the way to being viewed.

Attachments:

#1 - SOOTC (straight out of the camera) sRGB JPG. The only change was to down-rez the image to 700 pixels wide.

#2 - This simulates what a viewer would see if somewhere along the path to viewing (eg, forum software, browser, other viewer), non color managed software was employed, but the image had originally been posted in Adobe RGB.

#3 - This simulates what a viewer would see if somewhere along the path to viewing (eg, forum software, browser, other viewer), non color managed software was employed, but the image had originally been posted in ProPhoto.

Obviously, if you want to completely avoid this issue, especially with images having as narrow gamut as portraits ( without a bright, saturated background), always post in sRGB.


HTH,

Tom M

 

[Evil Nemesis]

yup... Your first image reminds me of (duplicate the original , set the blending mode to soft light) process Nice info.

 

[Tom Mann]

I know I said that I wasn't going to attempt to cc / tweak this image, but I couldn't resist. My guess is that the subject looks something like this ...

Tom M

 

[JDługosz]

Tom, so how did you do it? I see it addressed just the feature I was concerned about.

re sRGB: sorry to cause such a commotion, but I had assumed that this forum at least would be using color managed software and/or know what to do to view a picture if not directly in the browser. I did not want to lose the very details I was asking about by blindly "saving for web", or get curve etc. advise that was totally wrong due to the image being different from the one I was actually editing. So I used AdobeRGB as a compromise. The forum might want to put a note along where the upload directions are. It tells you what file extensions are allowed and other tidbits, and this would fall in the same category. It could also check for profiles upon uploading; after all, it already munges the picture to make the in-note embedded version.

more musings: I have an idea of what might have caused it, too. The other subject that looks uniformly too yellow (more Japanese than the correct Slavic) can be addressed with fiddling with the color temp etc. and I can get it to look more bronze instead. This photo (myself, actually) was problematic because it is only in spots.

Thinking about that, I'm wondering if the color-temp was set too low. The grey background, which is actually white painted wood blinds farther away from the photo lamps, might be picking up a larger admixture of ambient tungston light from the room, thus confusing the "eyedropper" neutral test. If there is not enough blue than it means the same as having too much yellow, and that would be more noticable in the dark areas, right? Unf. I did not get a gray-card (or gray cloth) shot at the time, even though I should know better! I did notice though that the color temp is lower than normal for those lights, so I wonder.

—John

 

[Remote-Medic]

Looks a little bright on my screen Tom, and still has a tint of yellow
Is you screen calibrated my friend?

 

[chitkaran]

I dont think so R-M, my screen shows the tint of yellow too..

 

[IamSam]

I agree with Chris, also looks like a sharpen filter was used.

 

[Tom Mann]

R-M, et al, easy things first:

(a) Yup, you caught me. I thought the original version posted by the OP was quite soft, so I did sharpen it a bit.

(b) Yup, my system is calibrated using a Color Munki. However, I've been a bad boy and haven't recalibrated it in probably 3 weeks or so because I've been busy upgrading the hardware on my computer (new HD, RAM), re-installed some software (Illustrator, InDesign, others), etc. but not doing much real photography. Prompted by your comment, I just re-calibrated my monitor. I didn't see much of a difference.

That being said, in the previous version I posted, I intentionally left my tweaked version lighter than R-M's, and only just slightly darker than the OP's original version. I did this mostly because of the confusion about the color space of the original. The meta-data for the OP's image shows that no color space was specified and there certainly was no embedded profile, yet the OP stated that the image he posted was in Adobe RGB and his working space was ProPhoto. However, when I tried assigning either an Adobe RGB or a ProPhoto profile to that image, neither looked very realistic, either. The long and short is that I was confused about what he was seeing and simply guessed that he was happy with an image on the bright side and aimed for that.

(c) WRT a yellow cast, I'm not sure if you are referring to an overall cast or just some localized spots of slightly more yellow skin (eg, under his eyes, between his eyes and ears). If it's the latter, I reduced, but intentionally did not completely remove them because, IMHO, that makes a face, particularly that of a rugged guy, look artificial and removes depth cues.

OTOH, if you are referring to an overall yellow cast, I'm lost. My grays are the same as R-M's, only lighter.

Next, I measured the average cmyk values for the subject's left cheek (RHS of the image) and found it to be around (13, 35, 35, 0) using a 31x31 pixel eyedropper. Typically, Caucasians usually come in with more Y than M, and C is about half of M, so, if anything he's still considerably more red-magenta than average.

In fact, the corresponding area on RM's third image measures as (15, 38, 40, 0), ie, very close to mine, a bit darker, and, if anything, a tiny bit more C and Y.

Just for yucks, I dropped back on the sharpening (but left a bit of large-R USM remain) and dropped the overall brightness a bit (but opted to still leave it a bit brighter than average). I didn't do anything to the color balance, either globally or locally.

What'ya think?

Tom M

 

[Remote-Medic]

Looking fine to me now Tom

I guess we all have idea's of how something should 'look' which has been very well illustrated here. Hopefully this will help the OP smooth out any wrinkles he has with his images. Nice Work Guys :cool2:

 

[Tom Mann]

Hi John -

I apologize for not responding to your post before now. For some reason (...maybe it's the 'hybrid' view of messages that I'm using, or the board's method of email notification...), I didn't see that you had posted a message until now.


----------------
So, in your message you ask, "Tom, so how did you do it? I see it addressed just the feature I was concerned about...."

I'm glad I got something right ;-), but unfortunately, I'm not sure which of the following two possibilities you are talking about:

WRT a yellow cast, I'm not sure if you are referring to (possibility A) some localized spots of slightly more yellow skin (eg, under his eyes, between his eyes and ears). If this is what you are referring to, I reduced, but intentionally did not completely remove the yellow in these areas because, in my experience, they often really are there, and if removed, it makes a face, particularly that of a rugged guy, look artificial and removes depth cues.

To reduce these areas, I simply selected an average color from the guy's cheeks, and painted in the dark areas under his eyes with that color using "color" blending mode. I then lightened up the areas under his eyes with a bit of the dodge brush. Both brushes were set to low opacity -- no more than maybe 20%, if that.

OTOH, if you are referring to (possibility B) an overall yellow cast,..." let me know, and I'll write down what I did, as best I can remember.
-------------

Inspired by this thread, particularly, the possibility that the forum software doesn't handle color profiles correctly, I just did a little test. The test and results are posted on a different thread. The result is that the software for this forum does appear to handle images with embedded profiles perfectly. I saw absolutely no difference between sRGB, Adobe RGB, and ProPhoto versions of the same image so long as a profile was embedded. As shown by my examples above, if there was a problem with the forum software, these three versions of the same image would have looked very obviously different.

That being said, when you examine the metadata for the in-line version of the image you 1st posted, you see no indication that Adobe RGB was involved at all. However, when you look at the metadata for the version that comes up when you click on the in-line version, you see that it indeed was in Adobe RGB, but without an embedded profile. I'm now quite sure this was the origin of the problem.

Accordingly, I fully second your suggestion to have a little FAQ that, among other things, tells folks to always embed color profiles for any color space other than sRGB.
--------------

Re your comment, "...The other subject that looks uniformly too yellow (more Japanese than the correct Slavic)...".

As far as I can tell, you only posted one image, so we can't tell what the other guy looks like.

--------------

Re your musing that you might have set the color temperature a bit off, it looked quite good to me once I assigned the Adobe RGB profile to the posted image. The only major global change I felt necessary was to increase the saturation a bit, and even then, I think I might have increased the saturation too much.


HTH,

Tom M

 

[JDługosz]

Tom, that is strange: When I look at the JPEG file using Thumbs Plus, the File Properties shows me "Color profile: Adobe RGB (1998)". The attached file looks right when I view it on the web, which is different from how the on-message preview looks, and took that to mean that it tossed the profile when it resampled and over-compressed. If the profile was lost from the uploaded file too, why does it look different from the preview, and specifically not washed out in the characteristic manner that such would entail? (Images without a profile are implicitly sRGB according to my browser settings)

 

[JDługosz]

Hi John -

if you are referring to (possibility A) some localized spots of slightly more yellow skin (eg, under his eyes, between his eyes and ears). If this is what you are referring to, I reduced, but intentionally did not completely remove the yellow in these areas because, in my experience, they often really are there, and if removed, it makes a face, particularly that of a rugged guy, look artificial and removes depth cues.

To reduce these areas, I simply selected an average color from the guy's cheeks, and painted in the dark areas under his eyes with that color using "color" blending mode. I then lightened up the areas under his eyes with a bit of the dodge brush. Both brushes were set to low opacity -- no more than maybe 20%, if that.
Tom M

Yes, thanks.

Another poster indicated that the skin tones are not overall too yellow, so I suppose my color temp/hue are right after all. I'll discuss the other face in another thread, taken under the same lighting.

Now that I'm no longer under any deadline pressure to produce a Christmas card (sis did not like any of the photos of her kids ) I'll play around with this to learn to do better.

I got these lights for my wife's still life photos of her cooking creations. On people I've used strobes and natural light, in the past. I don't own any strobes worth using, and have an investment in these new fangled low-power hot-lights. My first impression using them (total of 15 28W florescent bulbs) for a two-shot was that dispite people's amazement on how bright they were to them, it was barely enough to get a reasonable exposure time and medium aperture, and has to get the lights too close to work with easily.