An interesting lesson in colour.

[SteveF]

So, the bridesmaids dresses were/are cerise pink according to everyone including my Wife who looked at the wedding images last monday and said 'they're not red, they're cerise pink'!

Ahh. Ok, lets have a play around with the WB, the exposure and tone. WB was ok. Exposure was spot on.

Brought through the flower display the bride gave to my Wife on the night of the wedding as a gift and we matched the cerise flowers to the bridesmaids. Ok, that's minus 4 on the Tone control in Canon DPP.

Bride's mother rang in the week and said everyone's images of the wedding is showing the bridesmaid dresses as red!! AHHH!! Panic, panic. She's had prints done from other guests and every one (of the bridesmaids) is red...

After assuring her I had the right colour she came into the office with her nails painted the same cerise pink as the bridesmaids dresses and sighed a sigh of relief after seeing I had, indeed, gotten the bridesmaids to look like they did on the day.

After looking this up I find there isn't such a true colour as cerise pink. Cerise Red or #DE3063 or RGB: 222,49,99 yes but not pink. So it seems our sensors arn't going to truly record this cerise pink but render it red, albeit a truly bright red.

As I only do a couple weddings a year I don't come across these colour issues very often and last year when I did a couple with pink bridesmaids they came out a perfect match but, that I believe is more to do with the fact that they were dresses of silky material with a sheen reflecting more of the wavelength whereas this last wedding the bridesmaids were wearing a chiffon type material which was absorbing much more light which makes the wavelength shorter to the sensor.

So, now I have 66gb of images from one thousand originals (22.5gb raws - uh, I hate raw and the file sizes) and 3 versions of this colour scenario. The 'true' colour the not so true and some impression that the bride's mother is happy with!

We'll see what the bride wants when she returns from honeymoon monday.

[Shadowman]

Interesting story, you left out where exactly each of these series of photos were taken, was it outside/inside-natural light/artificial. Just adds to the fun.

[chauncey]

Hey...that's why they pay guys like you the big bucks. Were it easy, I could do it.

[SteveF]

Interesting story, you left out where exactly each of these series of photos were taken, was it outside/inside-natural light/artificial. Just adds to the fun.

They were all taken under natural light from noon until 7-8pm that night. The church door faced north so they went from daylight to shadow but AWB coped with that ok.

[SteveF]

Hey...that's why they pay guys like you the big bucks. Were it easy, I could do it.

I'm sure you could do it anyway. Most demanding part is the recovery afterwards as I don't handle hot weather too well these days. Mind I was shooting from 10am to 10pm - contract would be to cutting the cake which was before the meal but my Wife and I were offered the same as the guests so we stayed until the first dance. You bet we would as my Wife loves weddings!!

[Mike Buckley]

This really is a fascinating situation, Steve. Thanks for taking the time to share all of the details.

[Manfred M]

Welcome to metamerism. Some colours (cloth is a frequent issue here) do look different under different lighting conditions. My guess is that is the issue that you are seeing.

The other issue could also be the light the prints are viewed under. Tungsten lighting would tend to accentuate the reds and yellows in the image.

[SteveF]

Welcome to metamerism. Some colours (cloth is a frequent issue here) do look different under different lighting conditions. My guess is that is the issue that you are seeing.

The other issue could also be the light the prints are viewed under. Tungsten lighting would tend to accentuate the reds and yellows in the image.

This has all been on-screen, so far Manfred.

Should print ok. My experience thus far has been that they will print within tolerance. They'll go out to client on DVDs in a presentation box after the initial viewing this monday and bride agreed ok.

Metamerism ... hmmn. Not a subject I wanted to get too involved in learning as I'm happy to just bang away shooting jpegs and rely on the camera and the pre-sets I use. However, this situation now allows me to have a 'problem' to solve and learn how to get around it.

I'd be interested if anyone has any further ideas on how in the Canon raw software there are other ways to cure this? For those who are interested I used 'Standard' in DPP, camera set white balance, and -4 on the 'tone' control. I had tried 'faithful' instead of 'Standard' but lost some of the pop in the image and required the jpegs to be given +10 in contrast and +8 brightness and 60 on sharpness to get where 'Standard' got me anyway.

My pc took 9 hours to process the 1067 raws and 2 hours to re-process all the jpegs. It, like me, is happier with jpegs!

[Manfred M]

Steve - I worked in the garment manufacturing industry about 25 years ago (I was the engineering manager and often had to work with the quality people). The receiving process meant any shippments would undergoing an incomining inspection before the goods would be accepted from the supplier; which included a viewing in a MacBeth colour booth, to ensure it met specs.

Still the customer complaints would come in from time to time about there being different colour materials in the product. Virtually 100% of these were metamerism issues. Things looked different under different lighting conditions; and unfortunately the stores where the product was sold had variable lighting conditions.

I assume that no one (other than you) are looking at the images using a quality. profiled, IPS screen too, I would imaging.

Try desaturating the colours a tad to see if that helps. I have never used Canon DPP so have no idea as to how capable it is. I have read that the manufacturers image editing software tends to not provide the most accurate colours, as they tend to bias to how people perceive the colours from their camera displays.

[SteveF]

Manfred - thanks for your comments on the clothing industry bits.

I've tried desaturating a bit but it doesn't give me the result. These have been viewed on 3 different monitors now in explorer and all show the same result so I'm happy they will be acceptable, especially as all the guests photos now appear to have pumped out their jpegs with the same results as the few given to the bride's mother, i.e. all 'red' - very deep red too!

Macro/flower shooters have these problems I hear. In the pinks of flowers especially. It wouldn't have happened in the 'good ole days' of film of course!

[LocalHero1953]

At risk of "teaching my grandmother......": I assume your workflow is all colour profiled - camera to monitor to printer? That said, I also find pinks, magentas and reds the hardest to get right.

[SteveF]

At risk of "teaching my grandmother......": I assume your workflow is all colour profiled - camera to monitor to printer? That said, I also find pinks, magentas and reds the hardest to get right.

Yes it is. Studio shots with this colour works out fine but natural light is giving lots of folks a problem that I've spoken to since. This would indicate a white balance imbalance but I've tested that theory to death too.

I have a nagging doubt about some colours when the background contains deep green vegatation.

[Polar01]

Steve: if could be that the printer just can not handle the colour, I have the Epson 4900, 7 colours+3 photo blacks+ 1 matt black, and there are certain pinks, reds, greens and usually they are very bright. I have to check if they are out of Gamut on the stock I have chosen, sometimes I have to change stocks or add a adjustment layer (hue/saturation) with a mask, at times I have had to add six or more of these layers to address all the colours out of gamut. It usually only requires a small change in hue to correct the matter, only brushing on at an opacity of 5% or less sometimes.
I am posting an image that looks great on the screen, but was bloody hell to print, but I did get it after about 8 adjustment layers with masks. Before it printed dull, flat, now life now it just sings.

Cheers:

Allan

[SteveF]

Allan, not printed. They are still on screen and they looked wrong. There's no printer involved yet. I don't print my images anyway nowadays as there's nothing to beat a good lab. Plus I don't have the stress of coaxing my R1800 back into life anymore.

Are you converting to prophoto or another colour space? I shoot sRGB from start to finish as when it gets to the printer it looks right anyway. Playing with colour spaces to get optimum results always ended up with me chucking the PC outta the window!

Must stress tho, these were showing red, not pink, on everyone's images. This was not specific to me.

BTW nice image there