Color/Brightness Acurracy.

[MacBurg]

Hi all,

Recently I did a small photoshoot for a graphic design agency, shooting letterheads, envelopes, business cards etc. Although on the day I used the exact same lighting setup, and shot at a specified color temperature, the Raw files vary slightly in brightness, and technically probably color too.

So when I edit the files, is there a technique in Photoshop to ensure all the images have the same level of whites, and also the same color? I regularly use color layers in Photoshop for various fixes, and will probably pick a very slightly warm color to apply to all images, masking out any color graphics. I also read recently how to use "Match Color" in Photoshop so this could see some use, but my main concern is achieving exact brightness throughout all the images.

Any help or Photoshop techniques would be appreciated, cheers Shaun.


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[DiamondsDr47]

It would be a good idea to use a color checker. Also you still can fix color by numbers,
but really hard to say only you know what's cooking...

[pixelzombie]

this might help you out:

http://www.outbackphoto.com/workflow/wf_65/essay.html

[MacBurg]

Thanks for the help so far, after getting lighting setup for each shoot, the first image I keep always includes a gray card. I was more concerned with the technical brightness of each image, as I find it very hard to compare images in Photoshop. I thought there may be a tool or some way of sampling each image and changing their brightness by numbers so they all match each other? Am I missing something very simple here that I probably do anyway? Just visually comparing each image is a bit rough for this job, technically I need to have each product bang on.

[pixelzombie]

i would suggest checking the histogram of the images you like and comparing the new images to that range...

[Kevin Connery]

Originally Posted by MacBurg

Hi all,

Recently I did a small photoshoot for a graphic design agency, shooting letterheads, envelopes, business cards etc. Although on the day I used the exact same lighting setup, and shot at a specified color temperature, the Raw files vary slightly in brightness, and technically probably color too.

The first thing I'd check would be whether your raw converter is doing some automatic adjustments. If it is (and ACR has it turned on by default), simply turning it off should correct the problem.

Otherwise, if there's anything which is in all the images--even in the background or edges of the frame--you could use a persistent eyedropper to take a sample for each image, and adjust Curves to make all those samples match.

When exact matching is required, including a gray stepwedge along the edge of the frame is frequently done, then it's cropped out of the final image. If the lighting doesn't change, and the camera settings are maintained, it's generally not needed, but...