Color Correction, not fool proof.

[Bobby]

I hve fould a place were color correction from the first online class will not work. My grandson's soocer team has a black and green uniform, they were playing on a very green field. No other colors were in this shot. Just black and many shades of green. When using the medtone lesson from the training it said a light shade of green grass was the mid tone and the green shirt was the brightest thing in the picture. It made my picture a very bad shade of green. After several tries I decided that it would not work on this composition type. In this case the auto correctiondid a much better job.

Any one have this problem before?

[willpresley]

Yes Bobby, sometimes the autocorrection does a great job on pictures -- working with what you had must have been challenging with all those shades of green.

[Wendy]

Bobby ...

With things like colour correction no one technique is going to work on all images ... and images with a limited range of colours are always much more difficult to correct :)

Wendy

[ExpertNovice]

My next question was related to determining the mid-tone when no one is conveniently holding a neutral gray chart. :) Is that too much to ask a mountain or a model?

How can the mid-tone be properly adjusted and/or how can a color cast be removed when no adequate mid-tone area is available? The reason for my question follows.


The picture used was of the White House from the retouching class. The techniques used to determine black and white (shadow and highlights) were to use the threshold (retouching class) and levels (portrait class) and in this picture both made it real easy.

Using the mid-tone eye dropper on any area other than the lightly shaded area of the white house either increased the blue color cast or added a green color cast.

The main reason that I saw, with my untrained eye, to adjust the mid tone in that picture was how easily it removed the blue color cast. Still pretending to not have a decent neutral gray area in the picture I tried various other color corrections and failed.

Yes, I should wait until it is read in the book or learned from one of the two classes, but what fun would that be!

[Wendy]

Hi there ...

I'm sure that in one of the classes it covers this :) so maybe in a day or two it will pop up (like Day 5) :)



Wendy

[Foxhound]

My next question was related to determining the mid-tone when no one is conveniently holding a neutral gray chart. :) Is that too much to ask a mountain or a model?

Actually, it's not too much to ask of someone in most cases. Just last night I was hired to do some "quick" location portraits of several people at a particular place that was surrounded by psychedelic colors. There was just no way for me to get the colors right on my own so I asked the first person if they wouldn't mind holding up three small color sheets for me. I knew this would work since the lighting was going to be the same throughout the session. One black, one white and the other was 18% grey. It worked like a charm. Virtually all the colors were accurately reproduced in the final product. What a lifesaver that was :)

Something like this just might work at a soccer field if the lighting will stay somewhat consistant AND if you can find someone to hold up the cards for your very first exposure ;)

[ExpertNovice]

Wendy, yep... uh, the very next lesson. :D

Foxhound, I was thinking I might try something similar just to see how it worked out.

[Wendy]

Hi ...

Hope you enjoy it :)


Wendy