Correcting Color: I learned some PS! What do you think?

[Rachel Foster]

I'm soooo jazzed! I figured out how to fix the color of some photos I took yesterday. I inadvertently had my white balance on and they came out alllllll wrong. I went from this

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x153/annieblues/ps/tiny113blue.jpg
to this! http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x153/annieblues/ps/tiny113fixed.jpg


I know this is old stuff for a lot of people, but I'm jazzed!

[KrisCarnmarker]

Rachel, as you may know, there's always a thousand ways to achieve the same result in Photoshop. This is both a pro and con of PS :) So, care to share the technique?

BTW, have you seen the Photoshop Workbench that RadiantVista.com does every week? I recommend them highly. Unfortunately they only keep a couple of weeks online for free, so if you are missing something you may have to register to access the old "episodes".

[Rachel Foster]

Sure! I opened a shot I'd taken of the same place from the day before. Then I opened the blue shot. I went to Image>Adjustments>Match Color. In the "Source" box I clicked on the image from the day before. Magic!

[Marian Howell]

excellent rachael!
these were shot raw, right??
what's scary is when you find yourself preferring the first one LOL!!

[Rachel Foster]

Ok, now I have to out myself. I don't know what RAW is unless we're talking about bloody beef.

[Jack_Flesher]

Frankly, I do not think your second image is correctly color balanced either. What you did will make it more closely match another image, a good thing to be sure, but if that image is off so will the new one be. I suspect the original should look something between your two extremes, maybe more like this? :

[Georg Baumann]

Ok, now I have to out myself. I don't know what RAW is unless we're talking about bloody beef.

Hello Rachel, have a look here:

http:/http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-raw-files.shtml

[Rachel Foster]

Thanks, Georg, I will!

Jack I think you're right. However, I went back to the park and just did a reshoot. Downloading now.

[Jack_Flesher]

Jack I think you're right. However, I went back to the park and just did a reshoot. Downloading now.

So try adding a "levels" adjustment layer over your original. Then double-click the middle dropper on the dialog that comes up. Make sure it is set to 128/128/128 and click okay. Now find something that is neutral toned in your image, preferably a gray midtone, but light black or light gray will work too, and click on it and you'll see the color change. Try a few different spots until you get it to taste.

You can use the other droppers to anchor down dark blacks and top whites if desired.

Cheers,

[Rachel Foster]

I'll give that a try. I'm pretty intimidated by PhotoShop as I've struggled with it. I don't find it intuitively clean. Baby steps....

[Jack_Flesher]

The one I mentioned above is about as baby as you can get :)

[Rachel Foster]

LOL! I may be a fetus then. I will be upfront...photoshop scares me.

Time to put on my big-girl underpants and just do it, huh?

[Jack_Flesher]

Time to put on my big-girl underpants and just do it, huh?


LOLOLOLOL! Yep, ya just gotta bite the bullet and do it :)

[Andrew Rodney]

Ok, now I have to out myself. I don't know what RAW is unless we're talking about bloody beef.

You really don't want to be doing this kind of work in Photoshop unless there's a gun to your head, meaning you didn't shoot Raw which is the full camera data (its Grayscale) that is used to render the image. Rendering isn't color correction, its color and tone creation. It provide a huge degree of options simply not available using a rendered pixel based image in Photoshop. And its faster too!

Read this:

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/prophotographer/pdfs/pscs3_renderprint.pdf

Its long! But its well done and really explains the important aspects of handling Raw data.

[Rachel Foster]

On my study list! Thanks.