Partial color cast

[LactoBeeZor]

I am having trouble correcting a color cast on a picture. The pic has turned in only part of the photo and using a mask to fix the problem is not doing quite what I need. At least I think it isn't .....so "When in doubt ask the Pro's".

See what you can do with the problem and when you fix it give me a big hint. The picture is of a friends child and she said it was ok to use. I am still working for free so money is not changing hands.

Thanks very much;

[jeaniesa]

To be honest, I've never found a good solution for this. I've tried, but it's really tough! Sometimes it's possible to get it "close" with masking - then flatten and finish up by cloning the "seam" that inevitably still occurs.

But, most often I've asked the client if it's OK to crop the outer edge off and I've never had a client disagree with that.

Jeanie

[GOLDCOIN]

HI LactoBeeZor.....

Not exactly sure if this is what your problem is.... used curves to remove the red overcast , corrected in both the Rbg & Red channels.

But there is one sliver in the back upper corner, but didn't blend in.... is that what you were referring to when asking for some assistances.

Darling little one.....

I tried again...

[kathleen]

surely a toughie.

i found a copy of the book for sale on ebay to get some notion of what it's 'sposta look like, if attachment will attach . . .

[Hydia]

Here's what I tried.
Using photoshop 7>autocolor correct. After look at the book kathleen found I selected the book using color range, went into curves>selected the blue channel and made my color adjustment. Also went to brightness/contrast to darken.

Kept using color range to select the off colors like the red in the bkgd, using curves again selecting red>made a color correction.

Hopefully this might help some. Also I used no layers because this was just an example, but if i were to work on it for myself I would use layers.

[jeaniesa]

If I understand the problem correctly, it's not necessarily the color correction - rather it's the fact that the outside border doesn't need as much (or it needs a different) color correction because the picture was in a frame (or behind a mat) and the outside edges of the photo did not fade in the same way as the rest of the picture.

So, I think what LactoBeeZor is asking is how to handle that difference in fading - without just cropping the outside border off (which is my typical solution.)

Jeanie

[TheTexan]

I wouldnt crop the outside just yet. It has some very important clues hidden in it that reveals what has changed between the faded and non-faded portions of the image. For example, if you use levels to drive the image to one extreme or the other you find that the bottom 1/4 of the book is different from the top 3/4. That is where the fade line is. The book probably is the same color blue over the entire cover. I took a color sample in each of the two regions of the book then used a marquee to divide the image at that point then matched those two samples. That process told me what color changes most likely happened. Also the snowman, which is probably white is certainly neutral. That would make that snowman somewhere in the 4,2,2,0 3,1,1,0 or even 2,0,0,0 range. I read 1,5,30,0 just behind his right elbow. I brought that down to 2,1,1,0 and I started getting close to the right colors. The next problem is how to match the faded portions to the outer edges. In situations like this it is usually better to discard the outer portiion since it is most dificult to get the two together. Although Im not sure yet how to go about it the key will be to get a mask that represents the fading. It will be roughly square in shape with feathered edges. To make that selection we will need to extract the fading info probably from one of the channels either in LAB or CMYK red. I havent had time to work on that part. In other words youre looking to make a mask that will end up something like the upper image in fademask.jpg. Then all that is necessary to finish is to find the color missing between the faded and non-faded portions, use the mask to fill a layer with the inverted compliment color and change its blend mode to COLOR. In theory this should get the picture close to the original colors.

[Mig]

The texan has the right idea here. Personally I'd just crop it because I'm lazy, but if you want to fix the perimeter of the picture you have to build some kind of mask and save it in an alpha channel because you'll be going back to it again and again. Otherwise there's not much to it except to colour correct it with whatever tools you're comfortable with.
An interesting idea that not everyone is familiar with is to blur the adjustment layers, since you'll be making them for the center block of the picture and the edges. This will help smooth the transition of your corrections.


Mig

[Doug Nelson]

I adjusted levels in each color channel, then made a duplicate layer, set duplicate's blend mode to multiply, added a layer mask, and started painting on the layer mask. I started with a linear gradient, then painted in areas I wanted to lighten or darken using black and white alternately, 10% opacity.

[Guest]

I would frankly just crop it, especially because there really is too much space behind him throwing him off center in the wrong direction, but if you really want to keep all that edging, then here's what I did in the picture posted below.

I notice that in most of the samples posted here there is still a bit too much cyan, so I paid special attention to color correction before doing anything at all about that edge.

First adjusted color overall using 1) levels, 2) selective color and 3) hue-saturation. I did just a tiny bit of hand work on the bottom of the book, which came out royal blue while the top stayed duller/lighter, so I lightened and desaturated it. Ran a brush set to a greenish color over face and hair (at extremely low saturation) to cut the still remaining excess redness. Ran the saturation tool at low opacity over his overalls to brighten them a bit.

Now for that edge...ugh. Duped layer and painted over edges with low opacity large fuzzy brush set to normal to get the right tone, using a soft brick red on three sides and soft green on bottom. Then set that layer to lower opacity so that enough brick detail etc. showed through, then checked channels to make sure the tones matched the background okay, then merged. Then went back over the edges with same brush set to color, and corrected off-color by painting on color to blend with the inner edges. On the light stripe by the too-dark brick stripe on the right, I cloned some of the darker stripe at low opacity over the light edge to blend it better. Last, I duped the layer and brushed around the boy with a big fuzzy burn tool at medium-low opacity, then lowered opacity on the layer till I liked the way the brighter center blended into the darker border, to look like a natural backlight.

Turned out fine, I think, but still, I would just crop it!

Phyllis

[LactoBeeZor]

Thanks;

You Pros did a great job ! Now I will see if I can duplicate the ideas of yours on a very large tiff file. I had wondered what to do; and cropping it was an big option, but you made me belive in the power of the minds' eye.

Thanks again

[gland]

There are some very interesting solutions shown here. Nice results. I think I'll practice on this one a while.

[hanuman]

Greetings all,

I have just joined RetouchPro after having found it about two weeks ago. This thread (Partial Colour Cast) has prompted me to join and attached is my effort. Hopefully it will look as it does on my monitor.

There were so many steps involved that I've forgotten and lost track of what I did! Basically, I used a lot of adjustment layers :

1. Levels to adjust overall red cast.
2. Select specific areas, make layer and adjust colour and density (levels & Hue/Sat.).
3. Blended layer masks by painting.
4. At some point(s) duplicated layers, changed to LAB mode for dodge & burn.
5. Lasso specific areas, used Colour Range and Colour Balance to put colour in, eg. reds in Snow Man.
6. At some point used a Luminosity Mask, inversed and adjusted levels. Did this because it was the most effective solution at hand.
7. Went in and tidied up bits here and there with the Clone tool etc.
8. Whew....

Glad to have found RetouchPro - there is a lot to learn and hopefully I can contribute. And haven't messed up this first post!

Hanuman
Photographer/General Practitioner Artist

[alceria]

Here's my attempt. I started off in Variations, adding a ton of cyan. Then I did more color correcting using the color balance adjustment. I selected the book by itself and tried to get it close to the book someon else posted from ebay. Then I adjusted the levels and did a bit of dodging around the kid's face. Regarding the uneven fading, I don't really see a dramatic area of uneveness. I also have the sun shining in my eyes so maybe it's just too bright in here to see it. It seems like the problem area is naturally going to be dark anyway because of the lighting of the original photo so I don't think it's really going to draw much attention to itself anyway.

[Barbie Hocking]

Here's a solution that uses just one set of curves. The curves are at http://hockinggraphics.com/stuff/colorcastUpld.acv .