I surrender. I give up.

The enclosed picture was shot under horrible fluorescent light and incredibly ugly walls. The camera (in this case a Canon 10D) has blown the red channel over most of the face.

What I've tried:
Reconstruct the Red channel from approx 75% R, 10% G.
All sorts of Levels, Curves, Hue/Saturation, Color Balance, Overlay, Multiply, Screen, Masks...

There is no way I can get this face to take on a natural flesh colour! Whatever I try looks grossly unnatural to me. I am not good with colours, sigh. Usually there is some grey spot for adjusting WB. Not here.

She is an average Northern European woman, in other words, fair skin. Her husband says her eyes are a dark green, but the way the light comes here, I guess "any green" will do.

Please!!??

Shifted hue about -7.
Tweaked the saturation with Curves.
And messed with the luminosity a little bit.

Not sure about when I'll be able to post more details about what I did.

I'm by no means a color expert but I had to try this just to see if it could be done.

I used levels to do the major adjust. The blue channel was the one with the problem. Once it was adjusted, everything else pretty much fell into place and only needed minor adjustments with hue/sat. The numbers I got in the finished picture looked pretty good, so here it is.

Janet

Nice work Janet!

My quick try:

1. Duplicated the background layer
2. Ran Levels Adj. Layer on each channel
3. Curves Adjustment Layer
4. Color Balance Adj. Layer
5. Selective Color Adj. Layer--to reduce the yellow
6. Empty Layer set to Color Blend Mode, sampled some good flesh tone and painted with a soft brush @ 10-20% opacity
7. Empty Layer set to Softlight Blend Mode, soft black brush @ 10-30% opacity
8. Empty Layer with the Healing brush to reduce the shine and highlights and to perk up her eyes.
9. Flattened and applied USM

K

Shifted hue about -7.
Tweaked the saturation with Curves.
And messed with the luminosity a little bit.

Not sure about when I'll be able to post more details about what I did.

Not bad at all! Now if only "tweak" and "mess" colud be quantified... :tongue:

Oh DRAT, the post is really red. Doesn't look red on my monitor and the numbers were ok. Guess it is back to the drawing board for a few more tries. BRB.
Right. Been there, done that. Again and again... :(
Exactly what I got too.

6. Empty Layer set to Color Blend Mode, sampled some good flesh tone and painted with a soft brush @ 10-20% opacity
Aha! I have some good sunshine head shots of her daughter...

Your result looks too red on my monitor.

The blue channel was the one with the problem.
The red channel is blown. The blue channel is very noisy. In the area that has been cropped away, there is severe noise banding. 1600 ISO.

Rexx,

The posting matches my monitor. mmmmm? It may be a bit too much on the magenta side though. I think I could make it a bit "flatter" and put in some flesh tone colors from the Skin Tones Color Chart stored elsewhere on this site.

K

Not bad at all! Now if only "tweak" and "mess" colud be quantified...
Bah! Bleh!

I'm a big fan of tearing photos apart in various ways. One of my favorite ways is Hue, Saturation, and Luminosity.

If you have PC/Win, I have some simple plug-ins to help with this: http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9839

Or I can show how to use stock tools to do those things.

Hue
Extract Hue to colour (probably not necessary for this photo, but I generally do it anyways).
My general rule for this is fleshtones are red/orange and maybe a hint of yellow.
That is my starting point.
Far too much yellow and needs to be shifted a bit more towards red.
Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation
and use Hue to around -7 or so.
Doesn't take much.

Saturation
Extract the saturation to the Red channel in Channels palette.
Green and Blue channels are black.
Clip a Curves adjustment layer, use drop-down to go to Red channel, and tweak away.
My general rule for this kind of photo is that saturation should be under 50%.
That is my starting point.
For the given photo, I think sat is way to high and tweak it down with Curves in the Red channel.
Then I tweaked the low sats a little more.

Luminosity
Extract the luminosity, clip a Curves adjustment layer, and tweak away.

Ah...

---Curves ad-layer to tweak Lum, clipping group
-Extracted Luminosity set to Luminosity blending mode
---Curves ad-layer with tweaks in Red channel, clipping group
-Extracted Saturation in Red channel set to Saturation blending mode
-Hue/Sat ad-layer with Hue = -7
-Original photo

That's my general flow and it works very well for me for a wide range of 'bad' photos.

On mine, I balance the only known true black area, the pupil to about 22 for R,G & B. Changed to LAB and curved the Luminosity channel down to give the image more depth and increase the Cyan value in the process. Sharpened 200/.8/0. Back in RGB mode made a Curves adjustment layer and raised the blue curve.
Finally adjusted red and green channels until I got Magenta and Yellow values at around 30 with Yellow a few percentages higher and Cyan at about 5%. Skin withOUT a bit of cyan just doesn't look natural to me.

Personally I'm happier with the second one. It has considerably more magenta to it but the skin tone certainly seems to go better with the green eyes.

Cheers
Dave

Hi Rex, had a go with your image as follows.

Duplicated layer.
Placed Sample tool on mid toned skin area and noted readings for R,G and B.
Opened Skin Sample Swatch. This is available in Resources section here at RP. (at least I think that's where I got it.)
Sampled suitable skin tone, and noted R, G and B settings.
Created new levels adjustment layer and altered mid slider on R, G and B channels till readings on mid tone skin area were equal to those of the sample taken from the swatch.

Tweaked general levels a touch, and created hue/sat adjust layer then dropped sat by about 5.

Duv and Gary...WOW. I bow to perfection. Either and/or both couldn't get much better.

Janet

Thanks Janet. I just edited my post to include a second rendition. Can you look at it and tell me which one you prefer?

Thanks
Dave

The first one. :)

Went through my standard routine on this one, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; I think it may have worked this time.

Levels on each of R, G and B, bringing the sliders on each to where the histogram starts rising from the deck. This cleared most of the problem.

Then I sampled from the whites of her eyes with the dropper, should be white (gray) but came up with red too high and blue a bit too low, so I evened these up by adjusting the brightness on the separate channels.

Thanks Janet, I was just looking for a quick, simple way to do this by the numbers. Usually I work by eye.

Thanks, thanks and thanks! :grin:

Here, I snore away while you're all hard at work :bow:

First, about my setup. I'm on MacOS X with a rather expensive Viewsonic VX-2000 monitor. You Mac users out there know you can calibrate it with an OS utility, which is what I've done. My white point is D65, 6500 K, and I use a PC gamma of 2.2 instead of the Mac Gamma of 1.8. A couple of weeks from now I will get a real Gretag bug to hang on the monitor :-)

I changed my gamma from the standard 1.8 Mac setting to the standard Win 2.2 setting after looking at some of my images on the peecees at work. Ghastly, washed-out.

I can easily see all of the stepwedge on top of this window, except I have to look hard to see the difference between the two leftmost samples. It's morning here now and the sun is in my back; will soon reach my monitor.

As to the results of your labour I am very grateful for all the tips regarding workflow and especially the flesh tone swatch. I'll have to look around for it. Several of you reached an "almost" good result with only a few steps, where I had used 2-3 hours.

It is unfair to name a "winner", but I can tell you how it looks on my monitor in order of posting, which is totally subjective. I think that all of those who haven't tried to repair the red channel, will get an overexposed looking result?

I hope you all understand that my comments are not meant as critique, but only how my "colour-blind" eyes see the result on my monitor. I am really really not good at colours, honestly!

Original
Yellow and flat, but great eyes!

Stroker
Almost. Slightly overexposed, but then again, the original red channel is severely blown. I'm amazed at how quickly Stroker could "get there".

Janet
Red, overexposed

Ken
Is that red or is it cyan? Sunburn, at least. Overexposed

Duv
#1 The winner. #2 No, too much ... cyan? And you found BLACK! :)

Gary
Looks more overexposed than any of the rest. Are you a 1.8 Gamma guy?

Hephaestos
I think the colours might have been good, had it not been so overexposed. Another Mac user?

I promised my wife I would only spend two hours on this image. I think I'll tell her that I really meant two hours per day... :grin:

The sun reached my monitor now, so I cannot do any "real" work for some time, but I will check out all of your tips. If I ever reach a result that I'm happy with.... I will post it here. It might be interesting to hear how it will look on your monitors.

Again, thanks folks! :pleased:

Well the results are so so but the technique was fast.

1.) Copy the BackGround Layer

2.) Adjustment Levels. Black eyedropper on the left pupil and white
eyedropper on the highlight (light reflection) on the right eye (iris).

3.) Image Adjustments/ Auto Color

I don't mind critiques. Like you said, subjective.
Personally, I don't have eyes for this kind of thing.
Well, I do, but not anywhere near as critical like a real photographer.
It easy for me to wash-out a photo or pump up the contrast too much.

To fix the over-exposure in mine, I would just go to the Lum/Curves and tweak the Curves a bit more. Probably make it more of an 'S' shape.

Don't forget that the middle slider in Levels is a gamma slider.
Might help. I don't know.

Hi Rex, I'm working on an LCD screen at the moment. There was a little outside light on the screen when I worked on your image, I think thats what's thrown things. I've upped contrast a little, and dimmed exposure, how does this one post?

Hi Rexx!

Hephaestos
I think the colours might have been good, had it not been so overexposed. Another Mac user?

Yes I am on a Mac. And I've been having some issues with monitor calibration, which is one reason I submitted to this, to see how far off it really is. :ditsy: I really don't have a knack for getting it right I'm afraid.

You're also right about the red channel in the original having too much 255 in it; I didn't even notice on the first go-around. I'll fool with it some more today with that in mind.

I was going to apply my little Color-Declipping tutorial (which I think would be regarded here as cheating) but in the process I observed that the colour problems are different in the light and dark regions. The lights being too yellow and the darks being too red. That way it's difficult to apply a general fix to the image.

(Disclaimer - I am not a colour expert)- Applied channel mixer with 20/80/-10 monochrome to get a good greyscale image;
- Mixed this back in as luminosity;
- Selected luminosity (<ctrl><alt><~>) and used as mask for a Hue/Saturation layer, selected "yellows" and eye-dropped from the bright forehead, set Hue -10 and Saturation -10;
- Copied this layer, inverted the mask, cleared the settings <alt><Reset>, selected Reds and eye-dropped from the red shadows, set Hue +20, saturation -30 (thus balancing light/dark areas);
- Added another H/S layer, without a mask, setting Hue -7, saturation -22;
- Levels layer, Auto "Enhance per channel contrast", backed off opacity to 60%;
- byRo Brightness/Contrast, brightness -10 contrast +10.

Phew!
Rô

I also have this 3%-5% Yellow over Magenta in the book in front of me, but I cannot for the life of me make this happen. Whenever I adjust a curve or three so that this ratio is getting close, the face looks like something out of a horror movie.

As I said, I have some good shots of her daughter in sunshine. I pulled them up side by side, and even if the readouts were close, the daughter looked lovely and the mother ... well... :ditsy:

Apart from all the jokes you can make on that one, I started looking at the background. The daughter was shot against a blue autumn sky, whilst the mother had this absolutely incredibly ugly wall behind her.

So I changed the colour of the wall... That did the trick.

My steps.
1) Noise Ninja on Blue channel only
2) Noise Ninja again on all channels
3) Paint away slits in ugly wall
4) Repair Red channel as 70% Red, 20% Green to gain some contrast
5) Reduce Green and Blue to 90% as well
6) Use Levels to balance RGB slightly
7) Hue/Sat with a Mask to de-sat hair and other dark areas. Too red
8) Fake shadow on wall, using adj level and mask
9) Slight Hue/Sat correction
10) Tiny masked adj layer to brighten up green eye in the shade
11) Curves for a slightly darker image
12) Hue/Sat to change colour of abominable wall

All of the above in separate layers of course. No USM.

This will not make it to the cover of Vogue, but considering the rather hopeless starting point, I think this is not too bad. Interestingly, the flesh tones are not what the book says they should be, but on my monitor, this looks ok.

Lessons learned:
- Levels are also useful, not only Curves
- CMYK flesh values are not hewn in stone
- Background severely corrupts your colour sight
- Stick to sunlight or flash :tongue:

Now how does this look on your monitors?

A heartfelt Thank You! to all who volunteered to help. I was going to give up, but then I saw what could be achieved.

Aha. It was too large. Re-compress...

Lessons learned:
...- CMYK flesh values are not hewn in stone
....To me that's the most important. Must be one of those things our little brains do automatically when we look at an image. Doesn't matter much what the numbers say - if it looks wrong, it is wrong.

Thanks Rexx for an interesting thread.
Rô

Just finished recalibrating my monitor, and Rexx's second attempt looks way too dark on it. (The option for "native gamma" came up as 2.1, so I went with that.) I put a screen layer copy on top, and it looked better to me.

Going by what Ro noticed, I then used color balance to bump the red down on shadows and the yellow down on highlights. Also bumped red and green down in the midtones. Does this look as bad on other people's monitors as I suspect it does? :eek:

Just finished recalibrating my monitor, and Rexx's second attempt looks way too dark on it.
This has also struck me. I think every attempt here has looked too bright! But when looking at other faces I have shot, even from that same evening, same camera, they all look lighter.

I put a screen layer copy on top, and it looked better to me.
Yes, my standard trick for exposure compensation.

Does this look as bad on other people's monitors as I suspect it does? :eek:
Yes :devil: :rolleyes:
It looks blue here. But I think the main reason for that is her hair. I took care to desat the hair. When you tweaked the overall colour balance you must have re-introduced colour (blue) to her hair. But her lips look violet. That cannot be right?

I think it's time I get that Gretag bug... My colleague discovered a course on colour management, and the bug goes with it.

I just want to participate. :wavey:

I just want to participate. :wavey:
Seoul... you're 10? hours ahead of me. Haven't you gone to bed yet or are you up extremely early? :wink:

Apart from that, you're apparently the only one around here with a monitor calibrated the same as mine. That one looks better than mine! You were able to preserve the structure of the skin. This looks real!

What about a short narrative?

When I checked the settings for my calibration profile further up this thread, the monitor lost its profile, and I've been working all day on who knows what ... Gamma 3???

My "final" picture is not final, way too dark! :dead:

So to those of you who found it too dark, you were perfectly right :(

Too late - it's bedtime. Saga not finished yet.

It's morning again. I'm on the correct profile. The curve should be pulled considerably up instead of slightly down. Aaaaaaaaarrrrrggggghhhh.

Another thought that occurred to me (during the night?): I have calibrated for a white point of 6500 K because I thought white at 5600 K looked yellow. This means that if all of you others have calibrated for 5600 K white, it means your images will appear to you to have slightly more yellow, while they will appear to me to have slightly more blue. This can explain my perception of most of the images being off.

Did you know that visible light encompasses only one octave? Audible sound on the other hand, encompasss at least 10 octaves.

I sure didn't know that light encompasses only one Octave. I don't even know what an octave is to be honest with you.

I downloaded your picture because it looked too yellow. The info palette revealed that the skin tones showed that the Yellow was 56% and the Magenta was 30%. After converting to cymk mode I decreased the yellow to 45% and increased the magenta to 37%. Using a HSL adjustment layer I slightly decreased the saturation. I desaturated and slightly brightened the whites of her eyes (they looked bloodshot.).

The result is still not quite right but there is less yellow.

I think an octave is 8 keys on the piano.

I would agree with Phil that there is too much yellow. I run at 6500 also and I'm getting 50 yellow and 34 magenta on #1 marker.
I narrowed the range to 42 yellow, 37 magenta. Pulled down the black channel in CMYK to change the value from 3 to 2. I don't think you would normally see any black in causcasian skin. I must say Vegard that it is looking much better. One question though. I don't see any markers on the Iris. Did you balance this out as it has a strong known black value?

Cheers
Dave

Seoul... you're 10? hours ahead of me. Haven't you gone to bed yet or are you up extremely early? :wink:

Apart from that, you're apparently the only one around here with a monitor calibrated the same as mine. That one looks better than mine! You were able to preserve the structure of the skin. This looks real!

What about a short narrative?

The former estimation is right. :tongue:
I'm just back from my daily work.(1:22 a.m)

Though having attached the layer pallette screen shot, I'm sorry for my poor English.(It seems that making a post in English take much time than retouching a photo...at least in my case )

in my case...
1. Basic steps to get a little darkened(?) image
- darken red channel with Apply Image :
@ first time...source : red, destination : red, multiply, about 30% , mask : red channel
@ second time..." ", mask : green channel, multiply, about 10%
@ Duplicate the file-->convert to Lab mode-->adjust curves on L channel-->copy the L channel to the original file-->change layer blending mode to Luminosity
2. color balance adjustment layers with mask
...
3. Duplicate the original-->Assign Profile(nDigital)-->copied it to the original(converted profiles)-->layer blending mode set to Normal-->added layer mask
That's about it. In fact, I experimented with I haven't tried before, so I can't remind about the steps anymore. :dead:

You did good work, too. um...thanks for your compliment.

p.s. BTW, I've just read whole posts on this thread. It touched on 'monitor calibration'. I set the white point 7,500K. Sometimes I can't sure about the outcome's colors of mine. :confused: )

Try_1: Image>Duplicate --> Set (to duplicate) Mode>LAB color go to Chanels--> Click to view only the Lightness --> then Copy All (of Lightness Chanell) and Paste As New Layer into first (RGB) pic. Then Set mode to this Layer --> Color (about 35-40%).

Try_2: Cmnd(Ctrl)+Alt+~ --> Cmnd(Ctrl)+J to make the selection a new layer and set layer to Saturation (100%) --> go to Brightness/Contrast and set Contrast to -55.

Hope that helps

I think an octave is 8 keys on the piano.
An octave in audible sound is the "distance" between two tones where one has double the frequency of the other. On a piano it is the distance between two occurrences of the key pattern - 8 white keys. The octaves of audible sound are
16-32-64-128-256-512-1024-2048-4096-8192-16384 Hz. That makes 10 octaves. Children and young people (until their hearing has been destroyed by loud music) can hear another octave above that, but small ears have problems with the lower octaves, so we're roughly in the 10 octaves range. The ordinary CD cuts everything at 22,050 Hz. I can only hear up to 13,000 Hz.

Now a doubling of the frequency means a halving of the wavelength, and visible light lies in the range of 400-750 nm, in other words, approximately one octave. If our eyes were as good as our ears, we would be able to see heat (like The Predator) and X-Ray (like Superman)... :wink:

Sorry, too busy to look at your efforts today. I will try to check in again tomorrow afternoon.

I would agree with Phil that there is too much yellow.
Yours is definitely too ... red? And I agree, mine is too yellow now that I look at it with fresh eyes. So what is the obvious conclusion?

I layered my yellow one on top of your red one with an opacity of around 30%. Try it.

One question though. I don't see any markers on the Iris. Did you balance this out as it has a strong known black value?

Do the markers survive the Save As JPEG???? Yes, I balanced with the pupil, no marker though.

I usually run my images with higher yellow but on this my personal preference only is slightly redder to offset the green eyes. On the other hand, your creative overlay produces an almost classic skin tone value for caucasian. Yellow typically should be between 1/5 and 1/3 more than magenta according to Eismann. You come in at 1/4. Plus the amount of cyan works well. Glad you finally got there.

Cheers
Dave

" One stop pShopping'! This needs further adjustment, but I got this far with one step. A Napp tut.
Image>adjustments>match color
Check neutralize
Source> your image

Then tweak the sliders

Hi Kiska,

... Thanks for the great Tip!!! :bigthmb: .... I tried it on other pictures as well and it works very well!!!!

I don't know why. But it DOES help. Especially on certain images. Who would have 'thunk' it?

Ah, I almost forgot about Match Color. Thanks for the tip, kiska

I started off using Apply Image with the Green channel. I can supply more info if it's wanted.

Here I am, on a relatively quiet Sunday morning, trying to understand.

Several of you just - which were Stroker's words? - tweaked and messed with Curves and Hue/Sat, and by magic, a decent image appears. Too difficult for me. I get the impression I really have a colour sight problem. After an hour or less, it is all one big mess and I get the feeling I cannot distinguish red from blue anymore.

[A side note: My keyboard (electronic musical instrument) has the possibility for tuning. I can easily hear the difference between 440.3Hz and 440.0Hz. Now that's a difference quite a bit less than 1/1000. Not so with my eyes :( ]

So as opposed to the tweakers and messers, whose level I will never reach :wink: I try to understand the ones of you who have done really strange things.

Janet
"The blue channel was the one with the problem"

What problem? How to adjust? (Duv says he raised Blue)

Stroker
"Extract Hue to colour..." "Extract saturation to Red..." "Extract luminosity..."

Real dumb question here: What do you mean by that?

Hephaestos
Did you do a manual Auto Levels really? Like byRo in the next post?

byRo
I duplicated your method and got the same result, so I passed test #1 :wink:

How did you notice that the colour problem was different between highlight and shadow? This is something that would be very useful to learn.

I liked the trick of "reusing" the Channel mixer with Luminosity blend. Cool. And thanks for reminding about the reduced Opacity setting. I use it a lot, but tend to forget (for some unfathomable reason!) that I can use it all the time for any layer.

Hephaestos (again)
I think calibration is very easy??? Just check "Advanced", which isn't advanced at all.

philbach
In desperation this morning I tried CMYK too. Dead end for me. But I "stole" your eyes desat trick :)

venivedi (almost vici :wink: )
Just a comment: "daily work"? Home at 01:22? I don't call that "daily" :grin:

Comparing the various attempts here; I see that the ones I like best, all have in common that some attempt has been made to take care of the blown Red channel, either as a direct frontal attack, or more indirectly. That includes venividi, byRo, nkollias and myself. In all the other images, there is a washed-out quality (quality???) to the image, although the colours may be superior to mine. I think from this I can deduce that no channel should be allowed to be blown, ever. At least in facial shots.

Also there is the trick to copy the L channel from Lab. I have done that in the past, but forgotten about it :( One should probably retouche a bit every day, if it hadn't been for my daytime job. Time to retire...

7500K is too high I think. Depending on whom you ask, daylight is somewhere between 5600K and 6500K. I don't know why the other choices are available at all.

Rest of the gang
You didn't do anything I didn't already know, except you did it better than I :wink:
Unfortunately, that doesn't help me much! :D Practice practice practice

BTW, are you all aware that you can use the arrow keys in Curves to adjust the point? Sure beats the mouse.

Made a hue/saturation adj layer .set master saturation at-23and hueat-2,red saturation at-5, and yellow at-5. then I made a levels adj layer and because I couldn’t see anything in the picture that I thought should be white I used the black eye dropper on her pupils to set the black point. Then on the red channel I mover the black input levels slider to 21. Then duplicated the background layer twice and on the first copy adjusted the saturation to extreme red applied a layer makes and painted back in the lips with a 60% brush and then adjusted the layer opacity until I got the “right” look. Same process for the second layer only used green for the eyes

Stroker
"Extract Hue to colour..." "Extract saturation to Red..." "Extract luminosity..."

Real dumb question here: What do you mean by that?

See attachment

Upper-Left
Original photo of Biker Chic.

Upper-Right
The hues have been "extracted" to colour.

Lower-Left
Saturation has been "extracted". One side is greyscale and the other is just in the R channel. Pros and cons to both ways.
This is Photoshop's flavor of Saturation.

Lower-Right
Luminosity "extracted".
This is Photoshop's flavor of Luminosity.

*See link to other thread for my PC/Win plugs for help with this. If not PC/Win, I can show stock tool ways of doing all of that.

Tear apart, fix the individual pieces, then put back together.
Since Sat and Lum are Photoshop's flavors, can be put back together right in the Layers palette with Blending modes and can be tweaked with your favorite adjustment layers.

This past week or so, I've been doing some very interesting stuff.
I understand colour cast much better and have come up with some very promising plans of attack.
I get all goose pimply thinking about it.
Rawr!

Hello, Rexx. I'm back home 10 minutes early than usual. :wavey:

denschneider, I like your work because she looks warm and friendly.

Interesting stuff you've attached, Stroker. Thanks for sharing.

Upper-Right
The hues have been "extracted" to colour.
I don't understand how you do that. Is it with a plugin?

Lower-Left
Saturation has been "extracted".
Ditto

Lower-Right
Luminosity "extracted".
This is Photoshop's flavor of Luminosity.
Fortunately, this is recognizable :)

If not PC/Win, I can show stock tool ways of doing all of that.
Mac...

Tear apart, fix the individual pieces, then put back together.
Since Sat and Lum are Photoshop's flavors, can be put back together right in the Layers palette with Blending modes and can be tweaked with your favorite adjustment layers.
I'm with you!

I get all goose pimply thinking about it.
Rawr!
Have you intened to keep the goose pimples to yourself? :tongue:

Hello, Rexx. I'm back home 10 minutes early than usual. :wavey: I just reset my date/time control panel to your time zone. You're 8 hours ahead of me.

Interesting stuff you've attached, Stroker. Thanks for sharing.Please don't say you understood it? :lmao:

In fact, half and half. :tongue:

Quick-n-Sleazy Mini-Ramble

Start with a photo.

Extract Hue to Colour

Copy photo.

Edit > Fill
- Use: 50% Grey
- Mode: Luminosity

Image > Adjust > Hue/Saturation
- Sat = +100

What you will be left with is pure hues.
Quick-n-sleazy, not perfect, but functional.

Extract Saturation

Copy photo.

See: Saturation Out and In (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=151)

Lately I've been using a variation of that.
After extracting Sat to greyscale and it's on it's own layer, I'll fill Blue and Green with pure black. This will leave Sat in just the Red channel. Tweaks are then done directly to the R channel. For example, if you want to tweak Sat with Curves, use the drop-down in Curves to select the Red channel. This eleminates the need for a Gradient Map.

*Beer in mind that this is Photoshop's flavor of Saturation. This is *not* the same as S in HSB or S in HSL.

Extract Luminosity

Copy photo.

Edit > Fill
- Use: White, Black, or 50% Grey
- Mode: Saturation

You will be left with Photoshop's flavor of Luminosity.

Putting it together, my Layer palette looks something like this:

Extracted Luminosity set to Luminosity blending mode
Extracted Saturation set to Saturation blending mode
Extracted Hue set to Normal blending mode or Hue
Original Photo

With basic tweaks:

-- adjustment layer clipped to Lum
Lum
-- adjustment layer clipped to Sat
Sat
-- adjustment layer clipped to Hue
Hue
Original photo

When I'm looking to fix a photo, I always go through most of that. Sometimes all I need is a little hue shift and a little bit of sat tweakage. Sometimes it's just lum and sat. Other times, by looking at these 'channels', I'll get a better plan of attack using other tools.

As you can see, extracting HS/Lum is relatively simple. Shouldn't take much to record an Action. Personally, I wrote my own PC/Win plugs to do it for me with some extra options.

That is the very basic technique. If you get to playing with it and expounding on the ideas, you just might be surprised. The acrobatics that can be done with this never cease to amaze me.

That is where my flow starts. If you take a piece of it, cool. If not, that's cool, too.

I am working on a rather large series of tutorials that will get into the serious nitty-gritty of it.

I'm not sure what to say about my goose pimply idea. Kind of hard to explain.
You will be able to modify any two 'channels' with any two values much in the same way that Displace works.

Imagine something like this:
if (hue = red & sat = medium)
the (hue = magenta & sat = low)

It gets *much* better than that, but that's where I'm going to leave it for now.

Several of you just - which were Stroker's words? - tweaked and messed with Curves and Hue/Sat, and by magic, a decent image appears. Too difficult for me. I get the impression I really have a colour sight problem. After an hour or less, it is all one big mess and I get the feeling I cannot distinguish red from blue anymore.



Vegard, you don't have a color sight problem..period!! Get it out of you head. Your overlay on mine was an excellent skin tone rendition. Note I said rendition. There are many "acceptable" tonal variations. Much of it comes down to preference. I prefer mine to have only slightly higher yellow values..you like a higher yellow value. Nobody has a problem with that. All you want to do is keep yellow about 20 to 33 percent higher than magenta. When you look at your original picture it obviously had too much yellow. Reading off her forhead, yellow is double that of magenta. So, you can either work in CMYK and change the yellow curve to reduce or work in RGB and raise the Blue curve (increasing blue reduces yellow). Or use Hue/Saturation, Color balance, photo filter overlays.. whatever wags your tail to get your percentages! That's why in an earlier post someone said there was a problem with the blue channel..it was too weak which means too much yellow, right?
In any case, that is why I almost always work by the numbers because often I don't trust my eyes either.
So, when you have an image with "known" black, white and even better greys points, you balance the numbers to eliminate the cast. I'm sure you understand that. With your picture that's harder to do but for skin tones there's plenty written about skin tone values. Work to the values, 20 to 33% more yellow than magenta. Adding more Cyan gives more of a tanned look. Tweaking is by definition, minor adjustments that are made to suit your own personal taste. Also, don't forget that Sharpening your image and increasing/decreasing the RGB curve can give your image a very different and powerful look. Sorry, I'm starting to rant!

Cheers
Dave

Finally understood what you're up to. (If you look at my tutorials, they're weird too) And I won't have time to look at it again until Thursday! :( I wonder what activity will be down-prioritized... work? :wink:

I guess you're one hour behind me, and it's bedtime here already :(

Best part here:
*Beer in mind that .... :lmao:

Hi everybody,

What an interesting Thread and even more interesting methods!!!! Thanks for sharing!!! :happy:

Rexx,
tweaked and messed with Curves and Hue/Sat, and by magic, a decent image appears. Too difficult for me. I get the impression I really have a colour sight problem. After an hour or less, it is all one big mess and I get the feeling I cannot distinguish red from blue anymore.
Well, Rexx, than I must have a colour sight problem as well because after 'tweaking and messing' with colours for a period of time I get those symptoms too!!!!!

I had posted my version of your Image, but after reading and trying Kisa's tip I removed it and here is what I came up with.

I don't know how this will look like on the differently calibrated monitors .... but on mine it looks quite nice and, what more, I got there with a few very simple steps:

1) Kiska's excellent tip about Image>Adjustment>Match Color.... thanks again for it!!!! (values in Attachment 2)
...This gave me the basis for the next steps. (Attachment 3)
2) Selective Color Adjustment Layer. (Values in Attachment 4)
3) Brightness & Contrast Ajustment Layer (Brightness = +43; Contrast = +21), Ctrl+I inverted it's Layer Mask and with a soft white Brush (Opacity 50-80%) painted over Lene's eyes to brighten them up a bit.
4) Merged Visible (the action for merging 'visible' without losing the underlying 'steps' can be downloaded here (http://www.retouchpro.com/resources/fileinfo.php?id=11).)
5) USM to ligthly sharpen the image and improve contrast.

My Layers Palette in Attachment 5.
Just change the values in each Adjustment Layer until you are satisfied with the result....

Flora, wow(jaw drop) it looks very vivid. I like it very much.
Stroker, you made me happy to study sort of math(including D-Map in PS) .
I've followed your tutorial and found it very interesting! Thanks a lot.

venivedi,

Thank you so much for your kind feedback!!!! :pleased:

byRo
How did you notice that the colour problem was different between highlight and shadow? This is something that would be very useful to learn.

When I do my little colour-declipping routine (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=144), I'll usually be looking at an even rust-coloured area for skin with maybe some greys in the highlights and deep shadows (second image). In this case the colour was anything but even (first image). It was pretty obvious that the highlights were one colour and the shadows another. Actually, it's a bit like Stroker's "separation" process (yes I do understand), but instead of taking Hue and Saturation separately, I prefer them combined as Colour.
I will almost always correct an image separately Luminosity / Colour.

(This thread is getting really interesting)
Rô

When I do my little colour-declipping routine (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=144), I'll usually be looking at an even rust-coloured area for skin with maybe some greys in the highlights and deep shadows (second image). In this case the colour was anything but even (first image). It was pretty obvious that the highlights were one colour and the shadows another.In this case, red was blown over half the face, and if I had had my head attached to my shoulders instead of under the arm, I would have understood that this severely skews the colour balance between highlight and shadows, argh! :blush:
Also in this case I would not have needed fancy colour separation, but I am pretty sure that I would have found the same effect on correctly exposed shots (will check - have several), given what I know about the light in that room. I think I finally may be on the road to a technique I can correct my favourite portrait, one that has been lying around for 1.5 years...

(This thread is getting really interesting)You can say that again! And there may even be a possibility that when we round off, around 280 posts or so, I may finally have learnt how to correct flesh tones :lmao:

(And if anyone wonders, yes I have the time to post, but not play with Photoshop!)

Thinking about this over breakfast.

Further up this thread I wrote a list of the samples that looked better to me, as opposed to the ones that I perceive as washed-out. I think I said they were the ones that took into account the blown Red channel. I think what may be the reason is that those samples in some way also corrected for the colour imbalance between highlights and shadows. In the case of my own submission, this was pure coincidence! I was just trying to restore structure.

This new member has been lurking and reading the tutorials and past posts. Many of them are way over my head, and I was not about to open my mouth to show my ignorance. But this thread is so interesting that I just cannot resist. So be gentle. My technique is based on two sources: using curves and correcting by the numbers per Margulis, and applying skin tone numbers per Eismann. Here goes:

1. Set three Color Samplers: #1 for white point at the bright reflection on the lower lip, #2 for black point on the black of a pupil, #3 for skin (at the middle of her left cheek right beneath the eyeball, the numbers should read something like 254-175-100 in the Info Palette).
2. On a curves adjustment layer, drag each individual rgb channel so that #1 ends up with 245-245-245, and #2 ends up with 10-10-10 in the Info Palette, or something close to these numbers.
3. #3 now should be something like 245-178-149, which is within range of Eismann's recommended number for Caucasian skin 213-172-129 (boy, was she precise!)
4. On the curves' green channel, cntl-click at #3 to add a point and drag the curve a bit. Ditto for the blue channel. #3 should end up with 245-182-157.

The result is the first attachment. I was going to attach the curves acv file also, but noticed that it may not be an acceptable extension. Any hint?

Then I applied the unclipping tutorial by Senor byRo, and the result is the second attachment. Muito obrigado!

But after byRo hinted on the highlight/shadow colour cast problem with this shot, I notice that the shadows are too red.

The problem now is that I have moved from "can this picture be fixed somehow?" to "how to make this portrait perfect?" :lmao:

Next step now will have to be to go visit Lene (I didn't see her yesterday) to establish a visual check on what she really looks like! :)

hpycmpr..good to hear from you again. I'm glad you plunked into this thread. On many levels it reaches to what retouching and correction is all about. Personally, I don't buy into this too yellow too red consideration by Ro. I'm sure I'm probably wrong. At least, in the original image I don't see too red. I certainly see (by way of the picker) greater red in the shadows..so what? Maybe I'm missing something (usually am) but most images I look at (see attachments) have higher red relative to the other colors in the shadows. So how is Ro coming to the conclusion that there is too much red in the shadows? Is it objective? Subjective? Is everyone seeing something that I'm not in the image? I'm feeling like an old, geriatric twit.
You're image certainly looks better to me after being Ro clipped but you could also come close by additional curve tweaking. There really is something to be said for working by the numbers and the KISS principle.
Images with clear black, white (and even better grey) points are relatively easy to correct. Images like the one posted here is a combination of making sense of skin tone percentages, personal preference..and common sense.
You've done a good job, maybe lacking a tad in Cyan ( personal only). Stay involved and don't be afraid to put yourself out there. We can all learn from you as well!

Cheers
Dave

most images I look at (see attachments) have higher red relative to the other colors in the shadows.Hmmm, the first one looks natural until I have looked at the two others and come back. Then the first looks pale. On the other hand, she has "perfect" light, almost no shadows at all, so what did she really look like? The second uses a half kg of make-up, uninteresting, and the third looks (haven't checked) like highlights are blown, not good. My eyes start to water again.
Is everyone seeing something that I'm not in the image? I'm feeling like an old, geriatric twit.Thanks, Duv. This is fun, but am I really equipped (eyes) for this at all?
Images with clear black, white (and even better grey) points are relatively easy to correct. Images like the one posted here is a combination of making sense of skin tone percentages, personal preference..and common sense.Exactly. In most images there is a white shirt that provides both white and grey. Two clicks, and you're done.We can all learn from you as well! At least I learn from every single contribution here! :)

I thought I'd share this simply because I dig the simplicity.

Duplicate the layer
Set layer mode to Color
Filter > Blur > Average
Ctrl-I to invert
Lower opacity to taste.

That's it. I finished it off with a Levels layer, but just the highlight slider to simulate a full tonal range.

Hi Doug, nice technique to add to the arsenal. Did'nt understand what you meant by Filter/Blur/Average, so applied a Gaussian Blur of about 4pix, but this seemed to work fine. Thanks for the tip.

Perhaps it's only in Photoshop CS. It simply sets the entire layer to the average tone for the image. Kind of like Gaussian Blur set to infinity pixels.

Thanks for the feedback, yeah, must be a CS thing, because I'm using PS7 and it's not on there.

But after byRo hinted on the highlight/shadow colour cast problem with this shot, I notice that the shadows are too red.

Have you tried selecting shadows and highlights and work on them separately?

#1 for white point at the bright reflection on the lower lip, I don't think this is a good idea. The reflection on the lips is not a "natural" white, the real colour at this point actuallly would be a red. As I see it, this point is a forced (blown-out) white which doesn't depend much on the actual lighting of the ambient. Thus you will be correcting what happened after taking the picture and not the lighting at the time of the picture.

Maybe the white of the eyes will do, but I haven't tried that.

Muito obrigado!Disponha. É sempre um prazer ajudar. (You're welcome, it's always a pleasure to help)

Blur > Average is a PS CS thing.

The technique that Doug posted is the technique that I've been tearing apart to better understand what colour cast is and how to fix it.

The basic idea in that technique is to compromise between hue and sat (Colour blending mode with Opacity to taste).

Two things going on:

1. Hue is being manipulated in a manner similiar to this: bc_huesquish1.jpg (http://cablespeed.com/~jlhalmich/ozone/bc_huesquish1.jpg).
Hues are expanded and contracted, as it where. Or, as I like to call it, Squish Factor. You might be able to do that with a Hue/Sat adjustment layer, but I haven't tried.

2. Saturation is being lowered based on difference between the original saturation and the saturation of the colour cast looking to be blasted. The greater the difference, the more sat is left alone. The smaller the difference, the more things get desaturated.

Based on those observations, different methods can be found.
Or variations to suit different situations.
I'm still working on it - and it's a lot of work.
Wish I had more time for this.
Ah!

...Based on those observations, different methods can be found.
Or variations to suit different situations.
I'm still working on it - and it's a lot of work.
Wish I had more time for this.
Ah!

Take it easy. I wish you good luck.

Duplicate the layer
Set layer mode to Color
Filter > Blur > Average
Ctrl-I to invert
Lower opacity to taste..Although I really don't have time for this, I had to try.

WOW!

Like Gary, I have PS7, but used a Gauss radius of 250. I gave the inversed layer 20% Opacity, and the same to a 100% Saturation layer, and the result was as good as all the second best ones.

One interesting effect though. Try a Curves layer on top of this. If you do an S curve and pull the top part down, you get a red picture. If you pull it up, you get a yellow picture. ????

Doug, can you explain why your technique works and how?

I tried the Blur:Average method the other day and discarded it as the picture looked too monochromatic. I have had success in the past using this. So the problem may be:
a) the woman really is lacking in color
b) the original picture is overexposed going in
c) this method is inconsistent in its results
d) I'm a twit. This picture is just fine. She looks great.

One thing I do like is the way it easily adds Cyan to the mix which I was having trouble acquiring with curves and levels.

With all the renditions submitted by the "experts" I can't wait to see a new picture of this lady from Vegard.

Cheers
Dave

So the problem may be:
a) the woman really is lacking in colorI am not sure. I don't think so. But the lighting was absolutely horrendous
b) the original picture is overexposed going inIt was, and as I've said before, all the "best" ones have applied some sort of technique that affects the Red channel in some way

d) I'm a twit. This picture is just fine. She looks great.You are. Me too. We're all pixel freaks around here :lmao:
One thing I do like is the way it easily adds Cyan to the mix which I was having trouble acquiring with curves and levels.Cyan? Cyan! It drives me mad! I hate Cyan!
With all the renditions submitted by the "experts" I can't wait to see a new picture of this lady from Vegard.I just succumbed to peer pressure and called the lady in question, and I'll see her on Tuesday. She agreed to having her mug shot taken again, this time with flash, to get a reliable white balance. (I wonder what colour her hair is...) Hmmm, I might even get a good shot of her :) This time no 10D though, but my own A2.

Oh, and by the way, they've printed the photo and hung it on the fridge door :D

I just succumbed to peer pressure and called the lady in question, and I'll see her on Tuesday. She agreed to having her mug shot taken again, this time with flash, to get a reliable white balance. (I wonder what colour her hair is...) Hmmm, I might even get a good shot of her :) This time no 10D though, but my own A2.
:D

If possible, could you also try to get a bounced flash shot? Direct on camera flash I find pretty nasty.

Dave

If possible, could you also try to get a bounced flash shot? Direct on camera flash I find pretty nasty.
DaveSorry Dave, I have no external flash for the Minolta :( I used to have a Metz for my Nikon FE2 (still have it), and bounced it all the time, but it will not work with the Minolta :depressed

My young violinist friend (16) and I were practising last night, and we discussed the concepts of visual light being only one octave as opposed to the audible spectrum being at least ten. We also had some fun with the keyboard. As expected, he found the 7/10,000 difference to be "vast" :) After playing for a while, we had to stop, as it sounded "awful". One of his strings was at least 0.5% off :lmao: (It is very cold here now, so his violin had been subject to some temperature change, and had possibly not yet fully reached room temperature the first time he tuned it.)

So much about hearing, but here's the interesting part:
He told me that in ear training classes at school, they have to stop after about half an hour, as everybody is exhausted and unable to hear the difference between anything at all. This doesn't happen if we're playing real music. The ear remains keen.

If we translate this to Photoshop, it may be interpreted as the difference between actual seeing and studying "artificial colour" as we do, sitting here squinting at the screen. In real life, with "live" colours, we have absolutely no problems at all, just as we had to stop playing because of an apparently minuscule error in the tuning.

I know that professional wine and liquor tasters chew biscuits between each sip to neutralize the taste buds. Should we do the same? Take frequent pauses and look at "live" colours for a while?

Hi Rexx!

I think this picture had 2 problems:

gradation problem: it had no white point
colorcast problem : neutrals are disapeared

to solve the gradation problem U should set a white for the picture by the levels or the curves

colorcast problem all of the neutrals are colored so what i did that change the consist of neutral colors in the seletive color correction +7C -7Y +3K
skintone became ok for me some hue/saturation changeing i did too change the reds less saturated and the colorcast moved to yellow +7

Thanks for the response.

hpycmpr..good to hear from you again. I'm glad you plunked into this thread. On many levels it reaches to what retouching and correction is all about. Personally, I don't buy into this too yellow too red consideration by Ro. I'm sure I'm probably wrong. At least, in the original image I don't see too red. I certainly see (by way of the picker) greater red in the shadows..so what? Maybe I'm missing something (usually am) but most images I look at (see attachments) have higher red relative to the other colors in the shadows. So how is Ro coming to the conclusion that there is too much red in the shadows? Is it objective? Subjective? Is everyone seeing something that I'm not in the image? I'm feeling like an old, geriatric twit.
Unlike Rexx, we don't know what Lene really looks like, or under what lighting condition was the photo taken, or how the corrected image should look like. This probably explains why there is such a wide range of results and opinions. Correcting an image of "unknown source" can be either more or less challenging. For this image, we can probably agree that certain casts are unacceptable (to Lene at least), such as purple on the lips, or green in the hair. It would be interesting to present some samples to her and ask her which one she likes the best, and which one she thinks is most accurate (two different opinions).

You're image certainly looks better to me after being Ro clipped but you could also come close by additional curve tweaking. There really is something to be said for working by the numbers and the KISS principle. Images with clear black, white (and even better grey) points are relatively easy to correct. Images like the one posted here is a combination of making sense of skin tone percentages, personal preference..and common sense. You've done a good job, maybe lacking a tad in Cyan ( personal only). Stay involved and don't be afraid to put yourself out there. We can all learn from you as well!
I rely on the numbers and KISS because I don't know many other more sophisticated methods, such as those in some tutorials. You hit the nail on the head about correcting images with true grays is relatively easy. Images which do not have true grays are definitely more challenging, and there are plenty of these. It took me a while to realise this, and Margulis spent a whole chapter on this topic. Books and tutorials usually focused too much on how to remove cast by fixing the grays, but not enough on how to locate or identify the grays to begin with. Correcting a false gray is the beginning of the end, regardless how good the tool is.

Ven, you know me when I get the bug.

Rex, I gave a quick little description of how Doug's technique works.

Do photographers use the step-wedge thingie?
Grab a dowel, some paint, and step-wedge it.
Toss it into at least one photograph to get an idea of what corrections need to be done.
You could even do a dowel with RYGCBM.
Maybe I'll make a few and try to sell them on eBay...

I don't think this is a good idea. The reflection on the lips is not a "natural" white, the real colour at this point actuallly would be a red. As I see it, this point is a forced (blown-out) white which doesn't depend much on the actual lighting of the ambient. Thus you will be correcting what happened after taking the picture and not the lighting at the time of the picture.

Maybe the white of the eyes will do, but I haven't tried that.
Thanks for the feedback. I normally do not set white points on blown out whites. In this image, since there are no obvious black and white points (see my response to DU), I took the liberty to guestimate black in the pupil and white on the lip reflection. In this case, the blown out whites on the lip are small enough that they are not offensive. I intentionally left these untouched when applying your unclipping tutorial. Eye whites are typically not true whites, so I usually avoid setting white points there.

On a different subject, I have a question about your unclipping tutorial. After painting over the clippings, I have to restore the original contrast by applying the Brightness/Contrast tool a second time. Is there a way to get around this? Hate to spend a round trip on this tool.

She is an average Northern European woman, in other words, fair skin. Her husband says her eyes are a dark green, but the way the light comes here, I guess "any green" will do.


Well, We seem to be throwing a lot of darts and hitting the board but are we anywhere near the bullseye. We have a black point, the iris but we lack a true grey and white point. Perhaps working with the green in the eyes can get us closer. Given Vegard's comment above, the green in a lot of the renditions seems too light. Perhaps a Luminosity curve to darken the overall image or tying the yellow/magenta values together and increasing the percentages would result in a closer "bulleye" rendition.

Cheers
Dave

Sorry folks, this has taken some time, but Lene and I and my camera had to coincide in space and time :) After that, I simply needed time to pp again. Well, now it's Easter holiday and here we go!

In the meantime I've attended a colour calibration course with GretagMacbeth, the "Picture Perfect Color Seminar". I learnt one very important thing there that applies to this "project". RGB or CMYK values for flesh tones are absolutely worthless unless you state which colour space they apply to!

Back to Lene. What do I have to work with now?
- The original shot in ISO 1600, with the Red channel blown all over the place.
- A fresh, slightly underexposed facial shot from my KM Diamge A2, in sRGB using flash. This makes me fairly confident that the colour balance is correct.
- A pivotal understanding of the image having different colour problems in the shadows and highlights. (Thanks byRo)
- An understanding that CMYK or RGB values are worthless out of context, read colour space.

On page 82 of the second edition (2003) of her book, Katrin Eismann shows a technique for restoring a blown channel. Now who am I to stand up against Eismann? Let us just say that I am not convinced that this technique will always yield satisfactory results. It corrects the lost detail of the blown highlights without changing the colour (would that be hue?) of the image. But with one channel already blown, doesn't that throw the colour balance off? So why preserve it? I will try my personal approach.

I started thinking fresh. I tried to imagine what the image "looked" like. Here is my visualization:

First. let us imagine a b&w photo. When we look at it, we see intensities that vary from min to max. Min represents total black and Max represents total white. Everyone knows this, but bear with me while I'm stating the obvious.

Now think again. This b&w photo can be compared to a (rugged) landscape that we're flying over at high altitude. White represents mountains and high areas; black represents valleys and low areas. If we lay a vertical slice through this landscape, we get a height profile, just like you see in Tour de France or downhill skiing or whatever. Or like in CT (Computer Tomography X-ray).

If we lay such a slice across Lene's forehead in the Red channel, we get a nicely profiled curve in the temple area, but when we reach the forehead proper, the curve turns completely flat! It will look like those funny table top mountains you have in the US deserts. The Red channel has reached the technically maximum height (255), and is unable to show the real profile. What should have been there, is completely lost. Or is it?

The Green channel is not blown. In addition, the Green channel is usually almost synonymous with the Luminosity channel. In fact, my camera uses only Green for contrast focusing. Green is our luminosity and contrast friend.

I can make a mask from the Red channel, white where the channel is blown (255), black for the rest. I can then apply this mask to the Green channel. What does this represent? If again we apply a vertical slice, but this time to the masked Green channel, we see the profile of the "Green mountain", covering the same "aerial view" where the "Red mountain" was flat. We can think of it as if the water rose to the level represented by the mask, and only the unmasked area remained as an island.

I have now a fairly good guesstimate of what the Red channel should have looked like in the area where it is blown. There is just one problem; I cannot make the "Red mountain" taller :-( But what about "lowering the terrain"? Going back to the masked Green channel, I can use the histogram to see how much taller the "Green mountain" is than the area outside of the mask, or in the island metaphor, how tall is the tallest mountain on the island? If I "lower the terrain" to the same degree in all the channels and apply the "Green island" profile to the blown part of the Red channel, I should have re-created an approximation of what a correctly exposed photo would have looked like. This will of course not allow for colour variation in the skin, since the ratio of Green to Red will be static and unnatural. However, I hope that Blue (which I haven't touched) will take care of that, since it is notoriously blotchy and ... lively?

The difference between this method and Eismann's is that I don't touch the part of the image that is not overexposed.

Now I hopefully have a correctly exposed image, and can start to have a look at the colours again. Gaussing Lene's forehead from the flash shot should give me a usable swatch sample of her skin.


Ok, here we go.

1) Import and convert from Adobe RGB (the colour space used in the 10D) to sRGB (my working colour space)
2) Create a mask from the Red channel. Set Threshold to 255. Store the mask as an alpha channel. I will need it later. Name it "Blown".
3) Create an Art layer from the Green channel, for instance using the Channel Mixer.
4) Apply the mask from above. We now have a strange, grey, ghostly shape of most of Lene's face. The Red channel was worse than I had thought.
5) Create a Black filled layer underneath this one.
6) Merge the grey ghost face down into the black layer. Now we have a ghost surrounded by black.
7) Show the histogram for this layer. It actually has values from about 150 to 225. That means the "Green mountain" is as much as 75 levels high.
8) 75 is 1/2 of 150 and 1/3 of 225. The "tallest Green island mountain" within the blown Red area is 50% higher than "sea level" at 150. It means that this image is overxposed by exactly one half f-stop. It needs to be pulled back 1/3.
9) Use the Channel mixer and set all three channels to 65%, about a half f-stop lower exposure. Now we have the levels where they should be, and there is room to re-expand the Red channel.

That was the easy part. I will not need any of the layers anymore, except the "Blown" alpha mask, so I can throw them away.

Now how do I partially replace one channel? And it should be seamless. Hmmm... I have this uncanny suspicion why Eismann prefers that ... other method :wink:

After some hours of trial and terror, I think I have something.

10) Working on specific channels is easier in Greyscale. Create a greyscale image, same size. Drag the Red and Green channels from the working document to the Greyscale document. Drag the Blown mask too.

11) The channels become alpha channels. Disappointment. I thought they might instantly turn into layers. Copy-paste into Layers, "Red" and "Green".

12) Create Levels clipping Adjustment layers for both the Red and Green layers. Adjusting the right slider for Green to 230 looks ok to me. Only a few reflexes reach 255. The Green layer receives the Blown mask.

13) For the Red layer I adjust the output level (the one at the bottom) to approx 175, then use the arrow keys to do fine adjustment. I end up at 176. This number depends on the number from the Green levels.

14) I Gauss the Green (Blown) mask with a radius of 3.0. Better.

15) Still some mismatch. I use a brush at 10% on the Green mask a few places. Left eyelid (her right), left cheek (her right), lip where it turns into shadow. I think I have a new Red channel!

Below the two versions. They uploaded in the wrong order, so the strong yellow one to the right is the original, and the darker one to the left has a reconstructed Red channel withut blown highlights.

The rest of the story in the next post, hang on...

To create a good flesh tone swatch of Lene, I took my flash shot of her, Gaussed it at 50 pixels radius, and increased the exposure to a "sensible" level (flash reflection on forehead approaching 255). I then simply clicked around on her forehead, jotted down the readings in Excel and sorted them. NB! These are sRGB values.

R G B G/R B/R
164 113 93 69% 57%
165 116 95 70% 58%
171 123 100 72% 58%
179 123 103 69% 58%
180 124 104 69% 58%
191 133 110 70% 58%
192 135 114 70% 59%
206 145 123 70% 60%
209 152 130 73% 62%
217 161 139 74% 64%
225 169 150 75% 67%
235 181 162 77% 69%
238 180 162 76% 68%

Ahhh, this doesn't look good. The tabs are lost.

I then Gaussed my reconstructed Lene somewhat, and was actually able to place a control point that was both on her forehead and on the forehead of the flash shot. Then it was just a matter of correcting the Colour balance until the two images matched. I used the Channel mixer.

Ok, from the left, the hall where the first shot was taken. Both Lene and I were sitting on the bench along the wall. Second, the flash shot of Lene, Gaussed. Third, the reconstructed Lene, Gaussed to make adjustment easier. And finally Lene with the same colour values as the flash version.

This is where I lie down and cry :eek:

I am no expert lol but i do like to play photoshop challenge...

I used PSP9 to correct the colours, then i used curves to enhance the lips, fur, hair, then i used the patch brush...

...
I learnt one very important thing there that applies to this "project". RGB or CMYK values for flesh tones are absolutely worthless unless you state which colour space they apply to!
...
I guess the seminar was so helpful. Thanks for sharing. You've reminded me of an important thing.
By the way, I see red cast in a previous posted image of mine.
So...just second try...here it is. What do you think?

Well I tried my hack method again. Her left eye has a clear expanse on the cornea, so I used that as a gray point. Dropper showed red 252 (the whole red channel is pretty blown out), green 189, and blue 117.

So I adjusted the brightness in the color channels, red down 63, blue up 72. The high number of these adjustments is a giveaway that this method is not optimal for this kind of fix, but I tried my novice skills with levels and curves and came up with something even worse.

To me the lighting conditions are the real killer. I'm beginning to suspect that the necessary color information is just not there, in which case manual colorization in spots might be the way out.

This is where I lie down and cry :eek:When I set the flesh colour of an image identical to a known good shot of the same person, the second image looks awful :bawling:

I should return to Beethoven instead. That would at least make my piano teacher happy... :dizzy:

I am a newbie in here and learned a lot from you experts. my approach.
I usually check the rgb chanels. the red channel is too bright and blue is too dark. so I apply 30% green to both red and blue in normal mode to fake some details, and add 30% to green channel in multiply mode. then create a color balance adjustment layer to balance skintones. then another curve adjustment layer to adjust contrast. here is what I got.

I like those results realaqu, I'm writing that down. :thumbsup:

Thank you Hephaestos
I forgot to mention two things I did. I use dust and scratches filter on blue chanel to reduce some noise. and I found there is some yellow on her nose. so I use layer style to blend it away.

I have this thing about colouring faces called fascination LOL i could'nt help myself but have a dabble myself all opinions I m open to criticism whats life with out it LOL been married 20 yrs I am use to it by now HAHA. "Dont we just love women boys " :thumbsup:

I thought I'd give this one a try. I made about six attempts, based on lots of ideas found in the thread. Here's my "final" version.

1. Use the "match colour" trick on a new layer & blend in colour (thanks for that one!)

2. Set four colour samplers in the skin.

3. Converted to CMYK

4. Copied the yellow channel, then used levels to push in the white and black points.

4a. Loaded the new channel as a mask

4b. Added a curves adjustment layer and did a "by the numbers" correction on the four samplers (Y ~= M + 2)

5. Copied the magenta channel, then used levels to push in the white and black points by eye

5a. Loaded the new channel as a mask

5b. Added a curves adjustment layer to increase the contrast in the magenta channel.

6. Added a levels adjustment layer for the cyan channel (12, 0.88, 288)

7. Played with the layer opacities of the adjustment layers. The final values were: Yellow 69% opacity, Magenta 85% opacity, Cyan 100% opacity

Cheers,
-Darren

I thought I'd give this one a try. I made about six attempts, based on lots of ideas found in the thread. Here's my "final" version.

1. Use the "match colour" trick on a new layer & blend in colour (thanks for that one!)
rs. The final values were: Yellow 69% opacity, Magenta 85% opacity, Cyan 100% opacity

Cheers,
-Darren

Hi,
I am not sure if that is my monitor's problem or sth else, your picture looks a little bit greenish on my machine.
My own thoughts when I started to fix the picture. is this is a typical indoor bad shot. The reason, The CCD or CMOS sensor in DSLR just simulate the traditional RGB layered film camera. the blue layer is at the bottom of the film base. when green layer get a correct exposure. the blue layer still doesn't get enough lights to make correct exposure. that is the reason why the picture lost so many dark details in blue chanel.
So I myself think there is no way to get a perfect exposure in this case to fix that picture except we fake some details in both damaged red chanel and blue chanel. after this step, I can use the regualr methond to play with levels. curves or whatever neccessary steps to correct the color things.

just a newbie's opinion and please do excuse my bad English. hope you can understand what I am saying.

It's very hard to disagree with you Realaqu! I personally don't agree with the Idea that the Reds are totally blown out or that the blues have no dark detail. If you take a look a the Luminosity channel in LAB mode, things don't look that bad. Obviously, there are a lot of different approaches. I got what I thought was pretty good results copying an improved LAB luminosity adjustment curve and pasting into the Red Channel. Also as suggested before, running a modest noise reduction on the blue layer plus even copying some LAB luminosity into it can give you a strong footing for your color adjustments.

Also, don't forget to think about Color Profiles for corrections. I have over 50 with different temperatures and gamma points that I often use for corrections. I'm really beginning to think that for a lot of corrections, especially badly under exposed images, Gamma point change is the way to go as no banding occurrs as with curves and levels adjustments.

My own opinion is that the Red channel ain't that bad..blown out a bit in the quarter tones but easily fixed. The real problem has always been the blue channel with nothing in the quarter or half tones. IMHO.

Not sure, but to my Canuck friend, on my monitor, I'm showing almost equal amounts of Cyan to Magenta and Yellow. May want to check that.

Cheers
Dave

Hi, Dave,

The original picture does look good in LAB mode and your way works great, the reason why I use my methond to correc the exposure is because the color space of digital cameras, scanners are all device dependent. A picture with perfect exposure, the RGB curve should start or end at the same point. I can clearly see the blue chanel is too dark from attached histogram screen copy of the original picture. which shows we lost a lot of details in bright area of blue chanel. although you changed the display mode, but the lost details still can't be saved back. only the green chanel get correct exposure. that is the reason I use the green chanel to fake some details in blue to make the balance. I thought that might be much easier to play with color things. I double checked the red chanel, it seems ok actually. only lost a little details in dark area. seems I don't need to put some green on that chanel.

realaqu

If you take a look a the Luminosity channel in LAB mode, things don't look that bad. .... I got what I thought was pretty good results copying an improved LAB luminosity adjustment curve and pasting into the Red Channel.

Dave,
Luminosity is made by mixing the three channels together. The weights are Green 59%, Red 30%, Blue 11%.

There are some differences of opinion about the Red and Blue channels (*) in this photo, but it is clear that the Green channel is OK. As luminosity is mostly made of Green then it follows that the Luminosity will also be pretty good. (in realaqu's histograms you can see that the luminosity histogram is pretty much a copy of the Green histogram)

In fact, you'd probably have done better to use the Green channel to fix the Red (**) and not the Luminosity.

(*) The Red channel is totally blown-out in half the photo and that is the big problem.
(**) Using the Red for the low end and Green for the high end - later I'll post the method.

Rô

I would like to reconsider something I wrote way back in this thread. The highlight / shadow colour differences that I had detected are, in fact, just symptom. The real problem here is a completely blown-out Red channel.

Using Rexx'x analogy, the way to fix it is to detect where the Red channel "moutain" went flat and slice in the corresponding part of the Green "moutain".

Here's how to do it:

1) Separate the Red channel into a layer on its own: (Channel Mixer layer, monochrome, Red 100%; Merge to this layer <ctrl><shift><alt><E>; name this layer "Red";

2) Mask out the blown-out parts: Threshold layer; put the triangle where the histogram gets distorted [245] (see photo 1); Make a luminosity selection <ctrl><alt><~>; invert the selection <ctrl><shift><I>; Select the "Red" layer and Add Layer Mask; discard the Threshold layer;

3) Mark the transitions: Using the eye-dropper <I> put in 4 markers <shift><click> at the edge of the mask - choose regions of smooth transition, not sharp edges / shadows (see photo 2);

4) Separate the Green channel into a layer on its own: (Channel Mixer layer, monochrome, Green 100%; Merge to this layer <ctrl><shift><alt><E>; name this layer "Green";

5) Make full-scale Green: Apply levels <ctrl><L> to the "Green" layer so that the lightest parts are at 255 ;

6) Note the transition points: Using the info palette <F8> note the average value of the 4 marker points [170];

7) Adjust the "Red" to the "Green": Using the "Red" layer, deselect the mask <shift><click on the mask>, Levels <ctrl><L> adjust [output levels 0,176] until the info layer shows the maker points with the same number you noted earlier (170);

8) Combine "Red" and "Green" to make the new "Red" layer: Turn the mask back on <click on the mask> and the "Green" shows through. With the mask still selected run a Gaussian Blur to smooth out the transitions [radius 5]; Merge the "Green" and "Red" layers (turn off Background, <ctrl><E>, turn Background back on) (see photo 3);

9) Use the new "Red" channel: Open up the blending options of the "Red" layer and deselect the G and B options (see photo 4); we now have the original Green and blue channels from the Background and our brand new Red channel;

10) With the BIG problem solved a simple curve adjustment will fix the colours (see photo 5).

[I](I think I just wrote a tutorial!) :wink:

Rô

Hi, Ro,

That is a great trick to repair the red chanel. but I still have a question here, I cropped part of your picture and read the histograms in photoshop. seems the curve still not that good. especially the blue chanel. you can take a look on my work. the RGB curves are smooth, almost start or end at the same positon. which means the exposure of that picture get corrected. maybe you need some more work on blue chanel as well.

..the RGB curves are smooth, almost start or end at the same positon. which means the exposure of that picture get corrected...
I think you are tending towards an auto-level adjustment <ctrl><L>, this will indeed improve the exposure but at the cost of colour. If the R / G / B histograms all start and end at the same position then things are getting pretty grey. It is perfectly normal, with skin tones, for the Red to be concentrated at high levels, green in the middle and blue only at low levels.


As it is pretty common to have to deal with blown Red channels, and as the method I posted above looks pretty complicated - I made a action toolkit to make this easy (well easier):

1) Channels to layers - makes 3 layers, Red / Green / Blue;
2) Combine channels - recombines the channel information;
3) Greyscale channels - makes the 3 layers greyscale;
4) Red fix - does all the work.

Run Channels to layers, then Red fix.
(and then curves to get the colours right)

Rô

Hi, Ro
I don't meant the RGB curves have to be at the same starting or ending point. but for a good exposure, they have to cover the film dynamic range as wide as they could. that is the reason I said they almost start or end at the same position. I got this from

http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml

from your histograms, the area under the green curve are the total amout of geen lights of this shot. which means the picture is a kind of greenish. I worked on a similar case before, the photo is from another forum for discussion usage.
you might wanna have a try

http://www2.photoshopcn.com/attach/month_0502/_p_002_J8ju0ltL7iVo_kFGgI7Z9ymXk.jpg

I am not sure if there is a copyright issue because somebody asked for help on that forum. so I didn't attach the original picture. but I uploaded my own work on that.

Dave,
Luminosity is made by mixing the three channels together. The weights are Green 59%, Red 30%, Blue 11%.


I'm sure I'm missing something but this is precisely why I didn't use the green channel. By Blending in the green with the red and/or blue channel, you have weakened the green channel. How can it be otherwise. With your corrected version, LAB brightness (no mixing here I think) is now stronger than green channel so it might make sense to blend LAB back in to get rid of the apparent red cast to your image and put some strength back in the green channel. Also, when I blend the LAB "brightness not Luminosity" channel into the red channel, I think i get a better result. Also, here I paraphrase someone else
"Lets call RGB, LAB a color models as color spaces are used in the context of color management.

Sorry to spoil the party: RGB values only do not define any color. WOW?? RGB inside a color space does define an absolute color. Same RGB can mean very different colors in different color spaces. Any LAB color always defines an absolute color.

To me RGB is the least intuitive color model. The best for my taste is HSB as used in the color picker. But the mathematics seem to be against HSB and LAB models seem to be better.

If you think in terms of colors HSB rules:

1. Brightness (mostly responsible for detail in our vision system)
2. Hue (color base tone)
3. Saturation

In many tools and in layers it is good to think in brightness (or Luminosity not really the same but for me it is) and color (Hue, Sat).
Uwe

____________________________
Uwe Steinmueller
Editor Digital Outback Photo

Comments please Roland. I'm not as eloquent as you but still need to understand.

Cheers
Dave

I'm sure I'm missing something but this is precisely why I didn't use the green channel. By Blending in the green with the red and/or blue channel, you have weakened the green channel. Dave, couldn't follow you here. Seems that this is what I was saying. The Luminosity will have some of the distortion from the Red channel and some of the noise from the Blue channel mixed in - and that's why I'd use the Green channel by itself.
To me RGB is the least intuitive color model. The best for my taste is HSB as used in the color picker. But the mathematics seem to be against HSB and LAB models seem to be better.

If you think in terms of colors HSB rules:

1. Brightness (mostly responsible for detail in our vision system)
2. Hue (color base tone)
3. Saturation

In many tools and in layers it is good to think in brightness (or Luminosity not really the same but for me it is) and color (Hue, Sat).
Uwe

____________________________
Uwe Steinmueller
Editor Digital Outback PhotoFully ageed!:thumbsup: I was lucky enough to cut my Retouching baby teeth on PSP and not PS. In PSP the HSB is (or was, anyway) a front-line option and not something relegated to the off-line "Goodies" folder of the CD. I will always prefer treating Luminosity and Colour separately.
Comments please Roland. I'm not as eloquent as you but still need to understand.Dave, it's content and not the packaging that counts! ah... and don't follow me - I'm not sure where I'm going :knockedou

Any how, the point that I was trying to make os that once you've fixed the blown-out Red channel the rest of the correction is pretty straightforward.
I have a little collection of skin Gradient Maps that I use for corrections / colourizing - here are three examples of correction: Blushing red, normal(?), Latin yellow.

Rô

(PS the numbers on the attachments are Hue and Saturation at 60% Luminosity)

Thanks for your reply Roland. It's because of my communication skills that I don't do tutorials. On the other hand your's are excellent. I think the only point I was trying to make, and perhaps incorrectly, is that the LAB Brightness channel might be better in this instance over the Green Channel. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think Luminosity and Brightness are different..Luminosity as you suggest a blend of colors and Brightness which has no such values. There have been several references to the Red Channel being blown out. Certainly 255 is not a good thing but many of the images I have produced show Red at 235 to 245..not a long way from 255. The brightness channel in LAB does look weaker than the green channel but I still think it gives better results when you blend back into Red over the Green channel without the color shifts.
I guess what I'm saying is that I don't see Realaqu's and your preference in using Green Channel blending over LAB brightness, but I don't want to flog the poor old horse to death. You did get good results..even though I think mine is better..HA!

I hope one of these days we can get into a discussion about the value of working in different Synthetic Color Spaces to achieve brightness and color corrections.

Cheers
Dave

PS's Lum = R*0.30 + G*0.59 + B*0.11
HSB:Brightness = Max(R,G,B)
HSL:Lightness = (Max(R,G,B)+Min(R,G,B))/2

To get L in Lab, you have to convert RGB > XYZ > Lab. For just L, only Y is needed. However, to get Y, you need R, G, and B. So, RGB > Y > L. I think that's right. The weights are different depending on various things.

Something like that for the curious.

I just finished a plug-in and am putting it through some paces. So far, it seems to be doing extremely well for blasting colour cast and related things. Not sure how intuitive it will be for others, though. Few more touches and I'll let ya'll take a whack at it.

Also got a few other plugs up my sleave that could be helpful with these things.

Hopefully this weekend I'll have the time for another marathon and get things ready.

Hi, this is realaqu

I just learned a new way to handle a case like this. maybe pretty old to all of you. just change the image mode to LAB, and create a levels adjustment layer. play with A chanel. and make another curve adjustment layer for fine tune. the result seems not bad as well.

may be too late... just joined

having trouble uploading

Nanis, some posts like this one I don't think you can ever be too late. Just some wonderful posts here. Is it your own effort or the original post image that you are having trouble uploading?

Realaqu. You can get wonderful results working in LAB. It's not particularly intuitive but I often find it's worth spending the time there. It's not a garden that everyone wants to plant their seeds in though. Wouldn't mind seeing what you came up with.

Dave

had a go. Took a great deal of adjustment! I used multiple adjustment layers, with copies of the originals blended in at various points to keep detail. Some facial coloring painted in by hand; lighting a balanced slightly with an overlaid gradient layer.

Hi, Duv,

sorry about my late response, I didn't read this thead. the final result in LAB I have attached. but forgot the detailed steps.

Realaqu, just a few concerns:

1) The skin tones are just a "little" too plausible.
2) Sorry, my wife's lips are the same color tonite.
3) Rex's original post says she has dark green eyes. Unfortunately, your last effort shows that she has dark green eyes.

Please repost when you get things right.

Dave