Photo Retouching - - Getting White Balance Right?

jasosmith · #1 01-07-2007, 02:41 AM

Maybe not so much a retouching thread - but a critical issue in post production work.

I shoot RAW and come processing time there are some images that I find very difficult to attain the right white balance. In this instance I started by clicking an area of the dress - but its still not quite right.

Any secrets from you all as to getting it right.

duwayne · #2 01-07-2007, 03:08 AM

This is how I do it.
http://www.panosfx.com/index.php?opt...d=76&Itemid=29

This get the white balance in the right ball park (and sometimes it's right on) but I usually fine tune it from here. Also, before you leave the Level dialog box, click on the Options button. There are three different algorithms you can select from. Sometimes the results are the same and sometimes different. There is also a Snap Neutral Midtones box you can check.

I also set the Output Level to Blackpoint=5 and Whitepoint=245. From here it's usually on the Hue/Saturation

benzilla · #3 01-07-2007, 04:32 AM

Do a custom white balance with a "gray card" before you shoot if you wanna eliminate the whole process of color correction at post production. It'll take care of literally all unrealistic casts, especially on wedding dresses.
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...te-balance.htm

I used the Threshold layer technique with some fine tuning for your image.

philbach · #4 01-07-2007, 08:27 AM

Well you probably already know this, but using Image/Adjustment/Variations can give you a clue on which way to go. From what that showed me it appears that adding a little red could be helpful.

It also appears that the background is influencing her skin color some and green may not be the best background color to work with.

I switched to lab and boosted the magenta a tad

superkoax · #5 01-11-2007, 03:25 PM

well, I bought a whitebalance card from Raw Workflow and that is great! look at the demon on www.whibal.com very nbice product! Would recommend it to everyone! I'm not doing commersial, but I'm VERY pleased with it!
That WB card is meant to be used in RAW...

Gerry

santajuana · #6 01-12-2007, 03:52 PM

This is a quick mode...
open the image on PS, then on Curves adjustment select Options, that opens another window, there you must select on Algorithms, Enhance per Channel Contrast and on the Target Colors & Clipping click on the black color, in the next window on the RGB values put R 5 - G 5 - B 5 and click OK, click on the white color and put this values R 250 - G 250 - B 250 and click OK, click OK again and you're back on Curves there now you can make the image a bit brighter moving the curve to the white and click OK. The black and white adjustments that you made on Curves helps you to neutralize RGB images.

You'll have a result like this...

Hope this helps.
Silvia.

Lasa · #7 01-12-2007, 04:09 PM

I think the white off the dress is fine the problem is that the left side of here face it bleached with white light and the right side is deep in a shadow making the freckles look like sploches....so what I did was mellow skin on right side..then added a lighten curve with a gradient mask leaving the bottom the same shade and increase the llight from the neck up.

I think it looks better..

Lasa

Duffy Pratt · #8 01-12-2007, 06:18 PM

The problem here is that there is no true white in the picture to begin with. The best thing to do on here is the skin, hair, and the pearls. She leans toward being a redhead, with freckles. The dress is not white, but some shade of ivory to match the pearls, which also are not white, but on the yellow side.

Setting the dress to white plays havoc with her face and her chest tones. This is a rough try. I may err a little on the colorful side, but that would be child's play to pull back. Setting the dress to white, however, has the effect of killing alot of critical highlights.

Lasa · #9 01-12-2007, 06:40 PM

Duffy has a point...Jasosmith, is that the original image or have you already worked it in some way..(white point.. curves.. or hue/sat?)
If not original it would probably help to have the people here try and help off the original..

Lasa

santajuana · #10 01-12-2007, 10:18 PM

Don't agree with Duffy and Lasa, I took the original and Duffy's version and made a quick adjustment to both of them, here are the results...

By the way as a photographer and graphic designer I think that the jasosmith image is the original without any work.

Silvia.

unimatrix001 · #11 01-12-2007, 10:54 PM

i used auto color and auto levels. then selected the highlights and copied them to a new layer set blending mode to multiply. this is what i came up with.

Duffy Pratt · #12 01-12-2007, 11:01 PM

Look at the skin near the pearl necklace. In your retouch of the original, the skin is neutral on the yellow/blue axis in alot of places, and is actually tending toward blue in some places. All through, its showing about 5 in the A channel of LAB. So you have skin that is pure magenta in some areas, and slightly leaning toward purple in others. That can't be right.

Your retouch of my version is better, but it still has much stronger magenta than yellow. That would never happen for any person, and especially not someone with this coloring. For a scaled back version of what I did, this might work. I took the original curves that I did, and pulled them back by lowering the slope of the A and B channels. I still don't think this is perfect, but it does address the white balance issue (the white balance here is the same as in my earlier version, but the colors are a little more muted).

Of course, I don't claim to be either a photographer or a graphic designer, so YMMV.

Oh, and on the issue of whether anything was done with the original, the OP answered that already. In the RAW processing, he set the white balance on the dress. Since the dress isn't white, that is the cause of the trouble here. And then as a general matter, any picture that started as RAW and is now JPG has gone through some conversion. A RAW picture must be interpreted before anyone can see it, and the interpretation itself is some "work" on the file.
Duffy

zganie · #13 01-13-2007, 05:45 AM

I also use threshold adjustment layer.but you have to setup your levels eyedroppers to the right colors or i dont think it will work great
in the attachment I left where i find the white point and black point

zganie · #14 01-13-2007, 05:51 AM

sorry the points did not show up here I marked them

zganie

santajuana · #15 01-13-2007, 07:03 AM

Hi Duffy, you're right in some aspects but as I said I made a QUICK retouch, that's not what I would present to my clients, it was only a way to show that if you don't have a really white point in your image you can still get a nice balance, the method that I used from the original is one that more experience retouchers do (I not include myself in that list!!!) and I think that it has great results sometimes, of course the final image should be retouch in more than 2 min. as I did both.

sorry if anyone missundestood me

I wasn't trying to explain a great retouch, just a QUICK one.

silvia.