Blue and Blue/Green

[Sefirothe]

So its been a while. I've been so not doing much photography except where I need to take pics of my other hobbies, if you troll my flickr page you'll see yarn, a lot of yarn.

I'm using a Nikon D3100 and the kit lense it comes with. And having the damnest time trying to get accurate representations of vivid blues and blue/greens from the get go. I don't really have a light box so I either try to pick a day with good natural light and shoot outdoors on my porch or I use my full daylight spectrum desk lamp and bounce it off of a white wall on to the subject.

Still this latest skein of yarn is really frustrating me. Think nearly iridescent, vivid peacock feather blue/green. I keep getting washed out blue or grey ish blue. Is it something I'm missing on the camera or should I be fixing in post processing somewhere? I have access to Photoshop CS but I haven't really done any post processing on these photos:

Too black/grey in natural light:


DSC_1280.JPG by sefirothe9, on Flickr

Too black/grey and washed out in natural light:


DSC_1276.JPG by sefirothe9, on Flickr

Too black/grey indoors:


DSC_1263.JPG by sefirothe9, on Flickr

Its hard to find an online pic that accurately color matches the color in real life although this dress comes fairly close:
Yes its that much more green.

You can see my whole flickr album of trying to get this darn blue here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/5970507...7642209686925/

[Geoff F]

Under some conditions, getting accurate colour can be a real nightmare, Sharon. I regularly get similar problems when photographing flowers. And some colours like reds and blues are always problematic.

My advice would be to shoot in Raw format which will enable you to do white balance corrections reasonably easy when editing.

And do a Custom White Balance from a proper grey card before shooting. This is essential when shooting Jpeg but even when shooting in Raw it will give you a fairly accurate starting point for your final colour tweaks.

Without a Custom White Balance I find that I get back to my shots on the computer screen then start wondering about 'Was this flower really that colour' And the more I think about the more confused I get!

With some flowers, like Irises for example, I have even picked a bloom and placed it beside my computer. But they create strange colour variation depending on whether they are in sunshine or indoor light. So that idea didn't really work.

[rpcrowe]

I recommend that you 1. shoot in RAW and 2. include a color balance target like the WhiBal ( http://www.whibalhost.com/_Tutorials/WhiBal/01/ ) in every series of shots. Using the color balance eyedropper, "should" get you in the ballpark.

However, some materials include chemicals (I cannot think of a better word to describe it) which cause them to become luminescent under certain types of light, especially light which contains significant UV wavelengths. That might contribute to your problem.

Using a UV filter over your lens will not help because by the time you see the luminescence, it has become visible light. Using UV filters over the light source will help.

[Manfred M]

You have a technical problem called "out of gamut" issue with this image. It can be fixed; but that may not help you very much because your computer screen (unless it is a high gamut one) will not be able to reproduce the colours and if you take it to a place to make prints, they will not be able to reproduce the colours either.

Computers use something called a colour space to recreate colours, and this is really a subset of all the colours humans can see. The most common colour space; ones that your camera defaults to, most computer screens can handle, most commerical photo printers can reproduce and the standard of images handled by internet browsers is once called sRGB and was developed in 1996 by Microsoft and HP to reproduce the colours that technology at that time could reproduce. One of its deficiecies was the very vivid green colours, which are in the wool sample you are shooting (turquoise has blue-green colours).

I assume you are using standard settings on your D3100; your "shooting menu" would let you create AdobeRGB images, which would at least in part solve this issue. Shooting in RAW mode would certainly solve this as well, but you would have to handle a number of activities in post-processing to get the colours right.

The next issue is your screen. Unless you have a higher end screen, something called a "wide gamut screen", these can only handle sRGB colours and even if you improved your image capture, you still couldn't see them unless you upgraded your screen.

Anything you post on the internet, even in a colour managed browser, will be sRGB, so even if you got everything right, you would not be able to show us...

I'm not sure that this helps much, but at least shows that this is a technical problem and not something you are doing wrong with your photography.

[John 2]

Sharon, is this close? -11 on the Hue slider in the CS Hue and Saturation tool. Have a play.

[Loose Canon]

Hi Sharon!

A Passport color profiler may be a good bet for you to help with color accuracy.

But, you have to be careful to get a correct exposure to get accurate color. You might also play with some different lighting scenarios with your lamp.

I gave is a shot in post but it’s hard to say without actually seeing the yarn so I just guessed at the hue by the internet dress you posted.

The biggest thing was adjusting the white/black points. Everything is dark/gray because the exposure is incorrect. These adjustments brought your background back closer to white and gave some lustre to the yarn. I also did a white balance adjustment using the background white as a reference but it was already pretty close.

I think your problem is more exposure-related but there was enough wiggle room to deal with it in post.

Before- top
After- bottom

Hope I got close to what you are looking for!

[Sefirothe]

Thanks so much guys. So much food for thought. I'm definitely going to be trying some more shots in the near future. Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy and nasty so maybe Thursday.

Terry, yours actually comes closest. Perhaps a bit more towards the green spectrum but you got the luster and depth the yarn has (it has silk in it so its pretty amazing to look at...and feel!) Its one of those strange colors, when you look at it by itself, you think, yea its blue! But put it next to some blues and you see the green in it. John is a bit closer on the actual color.

I'm going to take everyone else's advice and switch to RAW. I think I'm going to order one of the WhiBal cards Richard linked too, they have some nice tutorials. And take a lot more shots, until I get it right.

[drjuice]

Hi, Sharon, I'm with Richard on this one. One of the reasons I went to a DSLR was because I was trying to take photographs of blue flowers and, if you're using the JPG setting as I was on a Point and Shoot camera, the way the factory set the JPG images to turn out really hosed the Texas bluebonnets in the springtime. The bluebonnets basically became whitebonnets, which nobody in Texas was interested in seeing, especially the Chamber of Commerce folks in the Hill Country west of Austin.

So, when I got my DSLR, I went through the agony of learning how to use RAW to shoot my images. Basically, for RAW images, all the original information for the image is captured such that it is preserved but then, all of the "stuff" that normally is handled by specifications as you're taking all your images is stuff you can set in an image editing program like PS or Elements of PS or GIMP (if you're a *X dudette) or FastStone's Image Viewer or ... or .... You have your blues back! And, I've got my process down now so that I can run my RAW images through a batch process so I don't have to sit and fiddle things to get the correct color in my results.

What kind of camera did you get, if you don't mind my asking?

Good luck.

virginia

[Sefirothe]

Took some shots today, but I wanted to play with them in Photoshop first before showing off anything. They do need some work. However looks like my old Photoshop CS (yes no number after that) doesn't like Nikon's raw formats. It wont recognize any of them. *Sigh* I've tried updating the Camera Raw plug in and still no go.

This is a really old version of Photoshop that I got at a steep discount as a college student waaaay back in the day, so I cant see myself now affording to upgrade the version. Wonder if I can find a conversion program.

Virginia, I have a Nikon D3100, for a year or so now. Its been great to just have fun with!

[davidedric]

Sharon, if you can run to it, replacing your CS with something newer would serve you well, and would future proof your ability to process RAW files should you change cameras. Pp software has come on in leaps and bounds over the years. You don't have enough to take out the Creative Cloud subscription (the only was to get CS nowadays). There are many alternatives depending on what your needs are. See lots of threads in this forum.

David

[purplehaze]

Hi Sharon,

I've nothing to helpful to add, but just wanted to acknowledge a fellow yarnie! I have often been in your boat! Btw, did you dye that yarn yourself? I spotted a dye pot on your Flickr site.

[Richard Lundberg]

Convert your RAW to DNG.

Admin Note: This won't have any effect on the colour issue, but it is a valid work-around for allowing images shot with more modern cameras to be opened with "less modern" versions for Photoshop (providing the correct compatibility mode is selected).

[Sefirothe]

David,

Well...there's still the income tax return. I might go looking for a newer old version of Photoshop. Maybe CS5 or so. I'm a little resistant to subscription based models for software. I'd rather buy and be done. Look at how long my one time cost for my old CS version has lasted me!

Janis,

Isn't yarn great? I knit, spin and yes dye my own fiber and yarn. Are you on Ravelry? I'm seffy over there.

[Stagecoach]

Sharon,

As you are a Nikon user you can always use the basic ViewNX 2 that comes with the camera for RAW for both WB adjustment and basic processing. Just a thought.

Grahame