Color me challenged

I spent a couple of evenings shooting my osprey friend with the 300 mm this summer. Our friendship is one-sided, of course, and it always behaves as if I want to rob it of its dinner. In any case, I have quite a few decent images, but my white balance is all over the place and I want to find a decent warm balance that is natural looking and reflects the time of day (a couple of hours before sunset) that I can apply across all of the images.

I always edit against a medium grey background and one of my frustrations is when I upload to Flickr and see the images against a white background, they tend to look much darker and muddier than they did in Capture One.

Anyhow, how does this look to you, color-wise?

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4475/...46e750d3_o.jpg

Looks good to me, I like the cool white spots which help break up the flat blue sky.

Janis - the ospreys around where I live, don’t look like they have quite those colours. They look rather too warm to me. A couple of hours before sunset isn’t getting into Golden Hour, so while the shadows will be getting longer and softer, the warm tones shouldn’t be that noticeable.

They don’t look quite right on either my laptop or iPad, but the colour accuracy on these devices is not nearly as good as on my desktop at home. I’m planning to have a look once we get home and look at it again there.

Janis, have you attempted to set a color balance using a target such as the WhiBal Card;

http://michaeltapesdesign.com/whibal.html

This card seems pretty expensive, however, I have been using one for many years (Donald first put me on to it). I use it either to establish a custom white balance or use it as a target within each group of shots and establish the white balance later in Camera RAW by using the eye dropper tool.

I am not certain that the WhiBal is all that much better than some of the less expensive white balance targets on he markets but, I have one and it works great. My philosophy is "Don't fix it if it's not broken" so I will continue to shoot with the WhiBal card.

I find that the WhiBal card is the most valuable for me in my dog portraiture when shooting dogs with colored coats. With my white dogs, I can pretty well get a white balance off the dog's coat. Even if the total image is not exactly balanced, if the coat is white - that is what I aim for...

I agree that a whiBal works well. The pocket-size one is about $20, I think.

The photo looks to warm to me--the white feathers, the spruce needles, and even the blue sky look too yellow. As an experiment, I opened it in camera raw and did nothing but move the yellow-blue axis 23 points in the blue direction. It's just a quick approximation, but see what you think. Is this better?

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-...7QmdzHk-X3.jpg

Maybe somewhere half way between these two examples?

Dan's edit may be strictly correct but I can see the argument for having something slightly more artistically on the warmer side.

Thanks, John.

My mistake, Manfred; this was shot during the golden hour. The EXIF says the time of shooting was 8:48 pm on July 3, and the sunset calendar I consulted for my location put the sunset at 9:42.

Richard, I sometimes use a large grey card when shooting indoors, but never outdoors. I do have a set of small white, grey and black cards on a lanyard, but I have never used them. What is your technique for using the WhiBal? I assume you place it next to your subject, when you are shooting dogs, but what about when you are shooting wildlife or other subjects at a distance from you? It looks like I would have to mail order the WhiBal, but I will experiment with the pocket-sized card that I have this weekend to see what kind of results it gives me.

Thanks for taking the time to play with it, Dan. I agree with Geoff that I think I would like something in between the two. The warmth the camera captured was obviously there, given the time of day, and it would both match my memory and be more aesthetically pleasing to me.

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Originally Posted by purplehaze

Thanks, John.

My mistake, Manfred; this was shot during the golden hour. The EXIF says the time of shooting was 8:48 pm on July 3, and the sunset calendar I consulted for my location put the sunset at 9:42.

Richard, I sometimes use a large grey card when shooting indoors, but never outdoors. I do have a set of small white, grey and black cards on a lanyard, but I have never used them. What is your technique for using the WhiBal? I assume you place it next to your subject, when you are shooting dogs, but what about when you are shooting wildlife or other subjects at a distance from you? It looks like I would have to mail order the WhiBal, but I will experiment with the pocket-sized card that I have this weekend to see what kind of results it gives me.

Thanks for taking the time to play with it, Dan. I agree with Geoff that I think I would like something in between the two. The warmth the camera captured was obviously there, given the time of day, and it would both match my memory and be more aesthetically pleasing to me.

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I know from a photographer he got good results using a white tissue for a WB preset. Just put it around the lens, take a WB preset shot and set the WB to that.

George

Richard's approach for this type of shot is a bit unusual. One normally puts the gray card near the subject to get an accurate colour temperature reading. A bit of a challenge when your subject is an osprey sitting at the top of a tree.

With respect to now viewing the image on my good screen, I will confirm my previous assessment that the image is too warm.

This of course opens up a bit of a quandary. This is a golden hour shot, so we are getting a low colour temperature direct light falling on the subject and an indirect high colour temperature secondary source from the blue sky. This is a typical mixed light issues and really has no right answer. If you are trying to accurately show the colours of the bird's plumage, and approach where you will get the colour as close as possible with respect to nailing the direct light colour balance. That will neutralize the yellows, but will in turn give the sky more of a deeper blue colour. Go for a more accurate sky, and the bird and the tree will have a yellow colour cast, which will give the tree foliage a bit of a strange colour.

This is not the colour choice I would likely use, but I simply want to demonstrate what happens when one takes the yellow of and a bit of the green (this is a green cast from the tree needles). It definitely gives a strange sky, with a more neutral bird colour.


http://i64.tinypic.com/14npgmr.jpg

Manfred's point about mixed lighting is important, but I wonder, given other posts above, whether Janis would want just the reverse--that is, more adjustment to the sky rather than less. I's starting from this:

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I agree with Geoff that I think I would like something in between the two. The warmth the camera captured was obviously there, given the time of day, and it would both match my memory and be more aesthetically pleasing to me.

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One simple approach to this might be the following:

1. create a color balance adjustment layer with no mask
2. Create a second color balance adjustment layer above that, with a mask selecting just the sky.
3. Use the first layer to adjust the whites of the bird, keeping them somewhat on the yellow side for the warmth Janice suggests.
4. use the masked adjustment layer to make the sky less warm.

Here is a VERY quick-and-dirty edit using that approach. The global adjustment is +45 in the blue direction on Photoshop's scale. The masked adjustment for the sky is a further +22 blue and +15 on the magenta-green axis, in the direction of green, to get rid of the color cast in the clouds. Is this a promising direction?

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-...GQvrtbn-X2.jpg

Hey, George, I don’t think I have ever heard of the tissue trick, thought I am familiar with the Expodisc. I believe that the difference with those tools is that you take your WB shot with the lens pointing at your light source, rather than your subject. Thanks for the useful demonstrations, Manfred and Dan. Dan is right, I am inclined to go with a warmer bird and cooler sky, so I will try making selective adjustments. Don’t have the energy to tackle it tonight, but I will get back to you with my results.

Ted, I don’t know what happened, but your message is no longer displaying.

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Originally Posted by purplehaze

Hey, George, I don’t think I have ever heard of the tissue trick, thought I am familiar with the Expodisc. I believe that the difference with those tools is that you take your WB shot with the lens pointing at your light source, rather than your subject. Thanks for the useful demonstrations, Manfred and Dan. Dan is right, I am inclined to go with a warmer bird and cooler sky, so I will try making selective adjustments. Don’t have the energy to tackle it tonight, but I will get back to you with my results.

Ted, I don’t know what happened, but your message is no longer displaying.

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On second thought I just wonder why to use a tool as white card or Expodisk in the golden hour. I think you're killing the effect of it. It works contra.

George

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Originally Posted by purplehaze

Ted, I don’t know what happened, but your message is no longer displaying.

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I deleted it, Janis. Had second thoughts that it was overly technical for this discussion.

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Originally Posted by purplehaze

I spent a couple of evenings shooting my osprey friend with the 300 mm this summer. Our friendship is one-sided, of course, and it always behaves as if I want to rob it of its dinner. In any case, I have quite a few decent images, but my white balance is all over the place and I want to find a decent warm balance that is natural looking and reflects the time of day (a couple of hours before sunset) that I can apply across all of the images.

I always edit against a medium grey background and one of my frustrations is when I upload to Flickr and see the images against a white background, they tend to look much darker and muddier than they did in Capture One.

Anyhow, how does this look to you, color-wise?

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4475/...46e750d3_o.jpg

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I go with the consensus, a little too much yellow in the bird. I played around in Cap. 1 with B&W colour tint, skin adjustment for the sky and a sky mask created in color editor

http://i67.tinypic.com/2m7ai4x.jpg

Sorry for the delay in responding. I was asked to shoot candids at a wedding and have had to turn my attention to processing that rather large set of images.

George, the benefit I see in using a white balance card (as opposed to an Expodisk) is that you could have the option of using its values in post-production for selective adjustments, as I think are needed in this case (cooler sky; warmer tree and bird).

Ted, I am not afraid of technical. It pushes me to expand my knowledge and keeps me humble. (Very humble. ;))

Thanks for the contribution, Brian. Quite the variety of sky colour we have going here! The tree and the bird look pretty good, but I'm not loving the sky. I will get back to this when I finish processing the wedding pics. They are presenting their own white balance issues and so I am learning from doing them. I am curious though, about your technique. I also use C1, but don't understand how you use the B&W sliders on a colour image. Can you point me to a tutorial?

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Originally Posted by purplehaze

Sorry for the delay in responding. I was asked to shoot candids at a wedding and have had to turn my attention to processing that rather large set of images.

George, the benefit I see in using a white balance card (as opposed to an Expodisk) is that you could have the option of using its values in post-production for selective adjustments, as I think are needed in this case (cooler sky; warmer tree and bird).

Ted, I am not afraid of technical. It pushes me to expand my knowledge and keeps me humble. (Very humble. ;))

Thanks for the contribution, Brian. Quite the variety of sky colour we have going here! The tree and the bird look pretty good, but I'm not loving the sky. I will get back to this when I finish processing the wedding pics. They are presenting their own white balance issues and so I am learning from doing them. I am curious though, about your technique. I also use C1, but don't understand how you use the B&W sliders on a colour image. Can you point me to a tutorial?

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Yes I can. Here it is. Whatever adjustments are made in B&W with the sliders will also effect the color version.

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Originally Posted by purplehaze

Ted, I am not afraid of technical. It pushes me to expand my knowledge and keeps me humble. (Very humble. ;))

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Good to hear it, Janis. I'll bear that in mind for the future . . :D

Lots of different ideas about your pic. I've always liked natural settings and natural colors. I don't like to alter them much. I will make them bolder, etc. but that is about it. Good luck getting this one processed the way you'd like it to be.

But I have to add a bit of humor - each time I look at your bird, I think he has small black glasses on! He shouldn't need them! <LOL>

Wedding pics! Wow! Lots of work! Have fun! :)

Getting closer...

With C1 11, I was able to select the blue of the sky using the Color Editor and turn it into a masked layer. I then brushed the clouds into the layer, and refined the mask quite nicely with the new Refine Mask tool. I then altered the WB of the layer to the default Daylight temperature, and increased contrast. I wanted to play around with the blue in the mask a bit, using the Color Editor and Colour Balance tools, but my changes were only displaying in the Browser image, not the Viewer one. Time to contact Phase One support.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4726/...d5e63d4d_o.jpg

they do have excellent support. Sky and clouds nicely improved