bridget

[Evertking]

weddingdressoutside by James Cason, on Flickr

[DanK]

A nice pose, but at least on my laptop monitor--which I calibrated, but quite a while ago--there is a yellowish color cast that makes her look unnatural, at least to me.

I moved it a bit in the blue direction and also shifted the tiny slightly toward magenta. Not a careful edit, but I think it is closer:



I'm a bit puzzled by this. You noted earlier that you had gotten advice to leave the WB at a fixed temperature. That will often create problems on the blue-yellow axis, but this seems like a problem on the magenta-green axis as well. What other settings are you using?

[xpatUSA]

A nice pose, but at least on my laptop monitor--which I calibrated, but quite a while ago--there is a yellowish color cast that makes her look unnatural, at least to me.

I moved it a bit in the blue direction and also shifted the tiny slightly toward magenta. Not a careful edit, but I think it is closer:



I'm a bit puzzled by this. You noted earlier that you had gotten advice to leave the WB at a fixed temperature. That will often create problems on the blue-yellow axis, but this seems like a problem on the magenta-green axis as well. What other settings are you using?

The image has no embedded ICC color profile, Dan, well actually no EXIF at all. Does that affect the color appearance on your machine? Or do you have to guess at what the WB might have been?

Still, as Manfred says, it's only the final image that counts, eh?

[DanK]

The image has no embedded ICC color profile, Dan, well actually no EXIF at all. Does that affect the color appearance on your machine? Or do you have guess at what the WB might have been?

Still, as Manfred says, it's only the final image that counts, eh?

Interesting. I’ll have to look at my Photoshop settings when I get back to my computer. All I can say at this point is that it looked the same in Firefox and Photoshop.


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[xpatUSA]

Interesting. I’ll have to look at my Photoshop settings when I get back to my computer. All I can say at this point is that it looked the same in Firefox and Photoshop.

I probably shouldn't assume that the dress is white in the scene but poking around in RT in that chest area gives:

Lab a*, b* = 5.8, 8.1 - a yellowish hue as you noted. 21 degrees hue in HSV. The WB in that zone before balancing was 6490K, 1.002 red/green tint. After clicking to balance, 5968K, 1.037 red/green tint (I don't know what RT tint numbers mean).

I'm guessing that your Photoshop and FireFox assume sRGB D65 in the absence of a profile ...

[DanK]

Could well be. You’ll see the same issues in the other image Mike posted today, and this might account for that consistency.


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[William W]

Re Dan's observation -

It appears to me that there a lot going on with the mixed lighting (big range of Colour Temperatures).

I downloaded both the original and Dan's Redo - in the original, overall there is a yellow cast and I agree the Magenta is out of whack too.

However (and noted that Dan's was a quick edit) – it appears to me that it remedied the overall yellow cast. My (also quick) fix of the yellow cast rendered an image almost identical to Dan's. Mine was a tad warmer and I would explain that as my personal preference.

Although I too would like to know the Camera’s White Balance Settings, and also what Colour Corrections if any, were made in Post Production, I think it won’t matter all that much in addressing this particular issue.

My initial explanation is that Flash Fill was used and the Flash is somewhere between 1 to 2 Stops under the ideal Flash Exposure for the shot.

I reckon that the main issue is that we’ve got the Main Subject’s front and camera side in a mix of two Colour Temperatures and the Flash, being at 5500°K is about 1~2 Stops (relatively) underexposed.

***

It appears that you’ve nailed the Focus in front of her eyes.

I assume you used Auto Focus, if so I reckon the AF locked onto the Wedding Gown Detail, either on the Left Breast, or it locked on the line of hard contrast that is made between her Left Arm and the White Gown.

In that shooting scenario, if I were using Auto Focus, I’d have used Centre Point AF, Lock AF on the eyes, Recompose the Frame.

Be aware also, if you didn’t already know, that you must never ever lock AF and then change the zoom’s FL.

WW

[William W]

Post Script.

I poked around similar to Ted's interrogations. I assumed that the Gown is indeed White, I think that is a reasonable and responsible assumption, in this case.

WW

[DanK]

Bill,

Mike’s other image was of a distant building too far away to be affected by flash, and he has had similar issues with other images, which suggests that there is something going on other than or in addition to mixed lighting

Dan


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[William W]

OK, understood. Thanks Dan.

For clarity, especially for Mike: my comments above relate to interrogating this image only and in isolation to any other of your images.

As my reference I used the array of various Colour Casts I detected on the (assumed) white Gown and what my eye detected as an 'odd' skin tone and the colour variations of that skin tone.

WW

[Manfred M]

If I assume that the railing is likely painted black and do a WB there, the gown has a cream colour.

Is the assumption that the gown is white leading us astray?

[xpatUSA]

If I assume that the railing is likely painted black and do a WB there, the gown has a cream colour.

Is the assumption that the gown is white leading us astray?

Unfortunately "cream" has many RGB values, unlike red herrings ...

https://www.startpage.com/do/search?...uery=cream+RGB
.

[Manfred M]

Unfortunately "cream" has many RGB values, unlike red herrings ...

https://www.startpage.com/do/search?...uery=cream+RGB
.

And so does white. Add an OBA (commonly done in the manufacturing or cleaning process) and add some UV there is a high blue component in the white. Black paint tends to be close to neutral black.

What I am questioning is the assumption that the dress is white. I agree, a gray card in the shot would have answered a lot of questions...

[dje]

You noted earlier that you had gotten advice to leave the WB at a fixed temperature. That will often create problems on the blue-yellow axis, but this seems like a problem on the magenta-green axis as well. What other settings are you using?

The problem with using Color Temp to set WB is that in general, CT (Correlated CT actually) alone is not sufficient to define the color of an illuminant. This is where Tint comes in. Tint is basically the distance off the Planckian Locus on a u'v' chromaticity diagram (in a direction at rt angles to the locus). The problem with this is that there is no standardised scale for Tint (as Ted infers in post 5).

On my Nikon DSLR, there is a CT setting for WB but no Tint. On my Sony mirrorless, there is a CT setting that can be used in conjunction with a hue fine tuning adjustment. This can be used with mirrorless because you get an instant preview of the effect of the adjustment but personally I would never use it. I'm a fan of Auto WB!!

Dave

[DanK]

Is the assumption that the gown is white leading us astray?

We don't know Bridget's complexion either. However, since the same yellowish-green color cast has appeared in many of Mike's photos, including a photo of a building that he posted yesterday, I think we can safely assume that guessing incorrectly about the gown or complexion isn't the root cause.

The problem with using Color Temp to set WB is that in general, CT (Correlated CT actually) alone is not sufficient to define the color of an illuminant. This is where Tint comes in.

Sorry, I must have been unclear. I understand that. One needs positions on two axes to define a point in two-dimensional space. What puzzles me is why Mike is having a problem on the second axis. We know from earlier threads that he was given advice about WB settings on the camera. That could account for the yellow, but not the green.

I think the only way to unravel this mystery is to get more information from Mike about what he does with camera settings, processing, and exporting/saving the images.

[Manfred M]

We don't know Bridget's complexion either. However, since the same yellowish-green color cast has appeared in many of Mike's photos, including a photo of a building that he posted yesterday, I think we can safely assume that guessing incorrectly about the gown or complexion isn't the root cause.



Sorry, I must have been unclear. I understand that. One needs positions on two axes to define a point in two-dimensional space. What puzzles me is why Mike is having a problem on the second axis. We know from earlier threads that he was given advice about WB settings on the camera. That could account for the yellow, but not the green.

I think the only way to unravel this mystery is to get more information from Mike about what he does with camera settings, processing, and exporting/saving the images.

Dan, while of course you are right, I find that from time to time I am asked to work on someone's image (often for restoration) where my best guess is all I have to go on. That being said, reds are the strongest colour in Caucasian skin, so excessive yellow is generally a good thing to remove. Greens are not typically found in Caucasian skin either, so those tones can go too.

[Tom Barry]

Manfred, on my monitor, your changes nailed this. Looks good.

[rpcrowe]

I'd like to take another tack on this image. While I think that her expression is engaging, I am not keen on the railing in front of her nor the brick background. It seems very industrial for a wedding image. Or sort of like emerging from an old high school building...

[xpatUSA]

One needs positions on two axes to define a point in two-dimensional space. What puzzles me is why Mike is having a problem on the second axis. We know from earlier threads that he was given advice about WB settings on the camera. That could account for the yellow, but not the green.

Dan, what axes are you referring to? In other words, which color space or model refers, e.g. x,y or u,v or a*,b* or Cb, Cr to name but a few?

[edit] earlier, you said "That will often create problems on the blue-yellow axis, but this seems like a problem on the magenta-green axis as well." - so, from that, it sounds like you're referring to CIELAB's a*, b* axes, eh? [/edit]

[Cantab]

... I'm a fan of Auto WB!!

Dave

I agree!

This thread and two other recent ones (including Driftwood Tipi) have reinforced my invariable practice of using auto WB in the camera and then making any colour adjustments while editing. (And if it's important to try to reproduce the original colours accurately, to use a Whibalance card when shooting the original.)