help with matching colour

[mikoe]

Hi gurus,

I have a problem getting photos to match when shooting with two different Nikon bodies (a d700 and a d200). The d200 skin tone colour is always frustrating, no matter what I try, so I thought one solution would be:

use a d700 image (with perfect skin tones) as the source image for the "match colour" adjustment in photoshop. But my question -- is there a way to find out what specific adjustments were made with the match colour command, so I could recreate them a shortcut layer and batch an entire folder? (would also allow me to decrease/increase opacity depending on image)

[mistermonday]

Hello Mikoe,
The difference between the D200 and D700 is likely due to the White Balance setting on each camera or it may be a result of the cameras' processing of the image if you are saving in a file format other than RAW (jpg or tiff).
I would not suggest that you use Match Color to solve your problem. It acts of selective areas, works via a complicated averaging and oixel by pixel basis, and does not always work well.
Instead there are other methods you may find more effective. Firstly, if you open your images in the Adobe Camera RAW module of PS or PS Elements, you can simple adjust the 2 temperature (white balance) sliders. This alone should be enough to make the two camera images look identical.
If you are not saving images on those cameras in RAW format you should be. Then the white balance setting can be adjusted manually, automatically, with a preset, or using the white balance eyedropper - all in Camera RAW.
Finally, both the D200 and D700 allow you to adjust the white balance bias to a great degree. You should be able to change the settings of you D200 to match your D700.
Regards, Murray

[Quantum3Studio]

I found the channel mixer really amazing for skin color correction. As a retoucher, you will have to deal with pics taken with tons of cameras. Using the match color feature (which is unaccurated as hell) is not the best way, and taking colors from a D700 shot is quite odd indeed. You can also mask out the skin and use variations and blend it to color or hue. By using hue gighlights and specular lights will not be affected

[namphoto]

Most raw converter's have a camera profiling feature.