Color Adjustment help...Please!!

[Soonerfan2]

I put this photo together using 2 images. The boy in the middle was taken seperatly from the rest of the photo. It seems to fit into the photo fine but I am having trouble adjusting the colors to match.

Can someone help adjust the colors? Can you tell me what you did to it?

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Soonerfan2

[Doug Nelson]

You don't mention which software you use. I'll assume it's Photoshop and you still have your workfile.

There are many ways to approach this, none of them is the "right" way. But one way that will teach you about this would be to make a Color Balance adjustment layer above the layer with the middle boy. Just make it and click OK. Then hit Ctrl-G to group it to the layer below it. This makes it so it will only affect that one layer, ignoring all the others.

Then doubleclick the adjustment layer to reopen it, and experiment with the sliders. If you totally mess it up, hold down the Alt key and the Cancel button will change to Reset and you can go back to the original settings.

Notice how the colors are opposites, so if you want to remove one color you move the slider towards its opposite. I haven't opened this image in Photoshop, but he looks a little yellow to me, so try sliding it away from yellow.

As you get more comfortable you can add other adjustment layers to try and match the tone, but it actually looks pretty good now. You might try adding a Levels layer (group it again, as above) and darken him a bit (use the middle slider). This might help blend him into the scene lighting a bit.

Don't forget to post your final results here, and good luck!

[Soonerfan2]

Sorry I didn't specify...PS7

Your input sounds logical, I'll give it a try and post the results. Thanks for you input!

[Hankster65]

I agree with Doug that he does have just a bit too much yellow. Also, I think you might try lowering his saturation just a teench (is "teench" a word?) and you might try to add a very small amount of Gaussian blur to him. Also, maybe just a very small bit of Noise. For sure, I'd get rid of the very bright highlights on his right arm to lessen any cutout effect.

All of that having been said, I think you have done a very excellent job of placing him in the photo! He looks very natural and most people would never question it. Great job!

[Leah]

I tried:

Colour balance like Doug suggested
Got rid of highlights on sleeves (looking at the direction of the light, the other couple should be blocking most of it from reaching his clothing). Also shaded his right hand sleeve a bit.
Darkened left hand side of his face - the lighting on the faces of the other two is very high contrast while the lighting on the boy was comparatively flat.
Slightly desaturated his face as the previous steps had left it looking a bit oversaturated.
Reduced the rim lighting on his hair so that you could only see it on the left hand side of his head, to match the other two.

[Soonerfan2]

I took the advice...take a look

I think I might be on the right track but I am still open to suggestions. Thanks Doug and Hank for you comments and tips. Thanks to Leah for giving me something to work from and compare to!

Let me know what you think.

Robert

[Soonerfan2]

Here is the picture.

Robert

[Vikki]

Robert it looks very good, but the boy might bit just a tiny bit too dark.
Also, I noticed that the blonde boy has a slight magenta tint on his face (was in the original too).
This stuff can drive you crazy, no?
Vikki

[Leah]

Robert - the blending in is much better but overall seems probably too dark - maybe halfway between the two? Or alternatively go closer to the original on the boy's jeans, which were pretty much OK to begin with, while leaving top half as is? Also, maybe highlight the left hand side of the boy's face just a little more to match the highlighting on the woman?

[roger_ele]

My two cents...

A liitle more sunlight in the hair.

It is not that it is too dark, the lightest areas of the skin are in the same brightness range as the other two, it is that the darkest areas are darker and thus it is a higher contrast. Try raising the brightness of the black point in curves. After lightening the shadows it might lower saturation enough so that you don't need to back off saturation seperately.

I liked the hot spots on the shoulder. the other two have sunlight hitting them from behind.

Good job of shading the face to be similar to the other two in terms of the direction of the light.

Roger

[jch71566]

I have to agree with Roger. The thing that struck me was the lack of sunlight on the hair.

-Jeff

[Soonerfan2]

All,
Thanks for your tips and ideas! I combined several of them and this is what I came up with. Added CB layer,Levels layer, and brightness layer to the boy, 1.5% uniform noise to the boy, used history brush and brightness to adjust shadows and applied inner shadow with blending options. I lassoed the top of his hair and rendered some light there.

Wow, did that take a long time!! There must be some faster ways...maybe by putting them all in the picture at once!

Any other comments are welcomed.


Robert

[Vikki]

I added a couple of things:
Highlight to the boys hair (to match the others)
Lightened his face just a bit
Shadow on the older boy's arm where the younger boy is in front of him.

[Soonerfan2]

Great job! How did you go about lightening his hair? I tried several things to no avail.

Robert

[Vikki]

Thanks.
I copied the top of the other boys' hair (highlight area) and pasted on to a new layer. I resized it so it fit the smaller boy, and added a layer mask so I could get rid of the areas I didn't need.