Can someone check teh colour caste on these two images?

[Stigmundfreud]

I've checked on two calibrated(ish) systems and the colours are pretty much close to the time of shooting, print out matched too. Just had them printed at photobox and they look very over saturated.

Thankfully the excellent guys there are taking the book back to check the results but could do with seeing if these look over saturated to the point you lose a lot of detail (as thats what the prints in the book look like)

[pic]

In that pic I know there is a flouro wash but wb was done on the shirts which brought the suit tones in line with the day along with skin tones under the light too. In the book however there is a definite wash of green/blue



in that shot the colours (in the book) are extremely saturated and do not match at all those in the photo. As I've said I've had 2 other books ordered from my system and the colours pretty much match perfectly the screen. I'm not concerned as I'm sure PB will work with me as they do have a good service record but I wondered if they do some profiling prior to printing? Its almost as if the images have been reprocessed to match a new colour profile?

[hill79]

I'm no expert, but that first photo looks very 'sea green' at the top, graduating down over the subjects faces. The second doesn't look over saturated to me at all though.

[EmmaP]

Agree with hill79. Very odd green cast in first one, graduating downwards - like a strange green light from above, like the sort you get in night clubs.

Second shot is spot on.

[beano500]

Well the first of those is horrible lighting. I just downloaded that and tried white balancing by picking the collars, which I assume might have been white, and that just pushes that green cast further - fluorescent strip lighting somewhere in that room? It's not over-saturated though - it's just the combination of light sources - difficult to get the skin tones natural!

The second image can stand more saturation which brings out the yellows and greens in the centre of the white flowers, but as presented the whites are blown slightly and need rescuing to get the detail back.

[Stigmundfreud]

guys thanks. Yes beano flouro hence the light, very weird set up with different light sources providing the light. It needs work on a bit more but Emmas comment about the 2nd being spot on would confirm my fears it was a slight issue in production. Still no fears here as they never let me down yet but the saturations off the wall.

[Simpo Two]

I get the occasional shot which doesn't colour-balance as I'd like - usually appearing both magenta and green at the same time - which is a bugger as the slider has magenta at one end and green at the other!

Can't help thinking that some fill-flash would have ironed out the light problem and also thrown a little light into those rather dim faces.

[beano500]

Not sure which of the camera manufacturers you favour, but the Nikon Speedlights come with filters so that you can (at least roughly) match the flash output to that of the background.

Sorry - that's not much comfort now.

(I'd wimp out at about this point and go for a black and white moody look for the two bouncers......)

[Simpo Two]

beano500 said:

(I'd wimp out at about this point and go for a black and white moody look

Genius! 'The WB is knackered, I'll BW the bd instead!'

[Stigmundfreud]

there was no flash allowed in church at the time or I would have colour balanced the flash. If the flowers are spot on as per Emmas thoughts (and its confirmed now on 3 systes of mine as consistent) the result is looking like a profile mismatch. Will wait for the results from them but sure it will be sorted

[Simpo Two]

Stigmundfreud said:

there was no flash allowed in church

Ah, didn't realise it was taken in church. Fluorescents in church? Yech! Well ATEOTD you can only do your best in difficult conditions - it's not a studio.

[LongQ]

The appearance reminds me of a shoot I did where the primary lighting was by Mercury Vapour lamps which have a very strange effect. Add in numerous other light sources and some daylight - oh, and a camera for which my favoured editor had no RAW profile, and things got interesting.

Whether the WB is accurate or not I think the look could be amended without seeming wrong.

Some quick and dirty samples. The top one clearly needs some more work on the boundary between two separate WB adjustments - its a bit tricky to be accurate at the sample size and resolution avaliable! Suffice it to say the blue cast on the collars should not be there.



Revised as suggested in subsequent posts ...

Also had a go at the shadows from the spectacle frames but not much satisfied with the results. Needs a different approach probably.




Two variants of the bouquet.

Edited by LongQ on Thursday 6th November 00:09

[beano500]

Simpo Two said:

beano500 said:

(I'd wimp out at about this point and go for a black and white moody look

Genius! 'The WB is knackered, I'll BW the bd instead!'

Ah, yes - fancy your hand at blending several images each corrected for the WB anomalies then?

[beano500]

LongQ said:

....its a bit tricky ...

That's an understatement and a half!

Mind you, not bad first stab!

[Stigmundfreud]

the shot of the lads is a lot nicer LongQ, I usually desaturate my stuff a little but couldnt be arsed in the time to do 170 shots to upload. But I like what you got there shame about the halo

[Simpo Two]

beano500 said:

Ah, yes - fancy your hand at blending several images each corrected for the WB anomalies then?

I have done! (if I think the results warrant the aggro)

[LongQ]

Stigmundfreud said:

the shot of the lads is a lot nicer LongQ, I usually desaturate my stuff a little but couldnt be arsed in the time to do 170 shots to upload. But I like what you got there shame about the halo

I can deal with the halo and the rather nasty colour shift post adjustment where the shoulders meet up. But it ain't easy the get accurate positioning when its small! Also a little time consuming to get perfection so I was only attempting to approximate the potential.

If you wanted to try it out, download the trial version of LightZone from LightCrafts.com (fully functional for 30 days) and I can provide the edit file that will give you the settings for the tool stack. It uses some regions on some of the tools (think 'masks') that would need to be re-sized to suit the full size file. You may want to finish off in PS or your favourite editor for some of the detail niggles on the background colour shift but otherwise it is a fairly simple job helped by some selective WB adjustments for different colours in different parts of the image.

I have no doubt it could be much improved by people with better skill and a more telling eye than I possess.


Grant

[LongQ]

Did some more work on the shot of the lads and posted it back with the previous version to make comparison easier without adding to bandwidth.

Grant

[Stigmundfreud]

thanks for the heads up on that tool. I been meaning to trial something like lightroom as it seems to get good results but I'm ore than happy just using digital photo pro from Canon at the minute.

The 2nd version you did I think its took away any life, started to look a little flat compared to teh first. I'm not actually trying to get rid of the blue caste in the first image as I know its one of those things but for future reference its interesting to see what you did.

[LongQ]

The desaturation is easily adjusted to preferance without affecting the blue cast - which itself is probably mostly an effect of the jpg compression in the sample. That is often unavoidable with editing lower-than-original-quality samples.

Adobe's Lightroom 'might' give better results than the Canon software but if you are using RAW I think DPP can do an excellent and subtle job with most images. Lightroom has other attributes related to speed and bulk processing. (I have Lightroom V1 - not bothered to upgrade to V2 so far.)

LightZone is a different game and allows multiple edits throughout an image using different parameters for different parts of the image and by different colours and different luminosity, etc, etc. should such things be necessary. It is also completely non-destructive and works with 16bits. It does not attempt to be Photoshop or similar but I much prefer LightZone to the others for most preparation tasks - I just feel more at home with it.