DO OVER: I don't trust my eyes

[carrbowl]

I have learned I can't trust my eyes...I want a "scientific method" for skin tones. I found the one on smug mug where the yellow and magenta are about the same and cyan are 33-50% of that. Are there any others that you use I could try?

[gtakacs]

Your images are way too yellow! Original and all post processed ones. Just take a reading from the little guy's shirt and you'll see that it's not white at all.

Here is my stab at it, two quick runs through curve adjustments, one to reset the neutral and one to make the colors pop a bit more with a tad of warm added back in.

I don't know what you're doing in terms of sharpness but this one is terribly soft as well. I sharpened it a bit but you cna only do so much when you don't start with sharp images to being with.

[gtakacs]

I played with it a bit more, adjusted the contrast with a bit of an S curve so they wouldn't look so flat and sprinkled a tad more color in there for good measure. It's a shame that it's still so soft...

[carrbowl]

I went back and checked on the colors...and they aren't what I thought they were...crap..back to the drawing board.

Well I like the colors better...but she looks fake...??? I think I'll just quit posting!!!:confus ed:

[DigitalScape]

Renae, the following is a color cast procedure I have used with some success -it is definitely not a cure-all approach for all images. It is quick and easy, so I usually give it a quick try and judge the results. (The following method was authored by Charles Glatzer). The steps are with Photoshop in mind.

1. Duplicate the background layer
2. Select the duplicate background layer
3. Filter > Blur > Average (this produces a solid color matching the color cast)
4. Open Levels Adjustment Layer, click duplicate background layer image with the middle (gray set) eyedropper.
5. De-select layer visibility icon (eyeball) of duplicate background layer (the layer made in step 1
6. Tweak the adjustment levels layer opacity to suit taste (~50% is normal)

I know this method will not work if there is a lot of different colors in the image. Try it out.

[MicWayWal]

Originally Posted by carrbowl

I went back and checked on the colors...and they aren't what I thought they were...crap..back to the drawing board.

Renae,

Some people can judge colors correctly, most can not. Most women can see colors better than most men. Something like 60% of all men are to some degree color blind. Having a cup of coffee can cause your colors to be off. Wearing a red shirt one day and a green one the next can affect color judgment.

Seeing correct colors is an art, like those people who have true pitch in singing. And there are times color is an opinion or judgment. Back in the day when we printed stuff ourselves, it became clear who could see colors and who could not. Those who could see colors, got the job of looking at every one's prints and telling them how much and what to correct. Still today in professional labs a set of good color eyes will view and approve all prints.

Don't be discouraged. I can not judge colors AT ALL. I let my lab have TOTAL control of my color. I know the people who do the quality control are so much superior to me. I let them have it. Fortunately the brain is the great adjuster. If the color is a little off the brain will make the adjustment.

So what do I do about color until it is printed. First I do a custom white balance before every different setup. Then I don't touch or adjust color. The camera will do a better job than me. Most of the adjustments I would do, make it harder for my lab to get a good print.

Here is a test to determine if you can see color correctly in the first place.
http://www.tedmontgomery.com/the_eye.../colortst.html

If you can see colors correctly then your judgment of colors is not good. I don't know how you would test yourself today to see if you can "see" color right. There are so many variables, color depth of jpgs, bad files, monitors, and room light. Maybe someone knows.

[gtakacs]

As for judging colors, now with computers and the color picker tool anyone can tell what a color "should" look like just based on simple math and experience. Finding neutral is easy by looking at the numbers in RGB or Lab. As long as your RGB are equal it's neutral. As long as your a and b channels in Lab are 0 the color is neutral.

Skin tones are a bit different. You have to know that in Lab color space, skin is always more yellow than blue (a is a positive number) and always more magenta than green (b is a positive number). You also have to know that skin, except for babies, is always more yellow than magenta (b > a) but only a little bit. In CMYK color space for skin you should have no black, little cyan, about 2-3x more magenta and a bit more yellow than magenta.

If you look at skin color in your original photo the cheek on the girl is 80,11,29 in Lab color space which indicates that it is way more yellow than magenta (11 vs. 29). You can also look in the boy's shirt (90,-1,16) and see that the magenta is probably right but the yellow is way off (-1 is almost 0, 16 is way yellow!). In CMYK you have 9,27,48,0 on the girl's cheek. That means your cyan is fine, your magenta is 3x the cyan so it's still correct but your yellow is way too high with 48%.

So you know that the image is way too yellow all around. What you need to do is remove all that yellow. The easiest to do is in Lab color space by adjusting the b curve. You can also try to adjust it in RGB by adjusting the B channel. In CMYK you'd adjust the Y channel. There are many ways to skin this cat.

But if I had to guess, I think the image was taken under nasty fluorescent lights and it was not white balanced correctly in raw. If you have the raw file you'd want to white balance correct in your raw converter and set neutral off the boy's shirt, as that would correct your color in linear space. It's a lot harder to color correct in gamma corrected color space such as sRGB.

Oh and I most certainly hope and assume that you are using a color corrected work flow and you are looking at these pictures on a calibrated and profiled monitor. Otherwise there is no way for us to tell what we're looking at is the same thing that you're looking at. Even with profiled and calibrated monitors there will be differences due to gamut variance in monitors but at least it'll be as close to a level playing field as possible. You can't do color correction by eye without having a properly adjusted viewing environment. This is where color correction by numbers still helps though.

And to close with an interesting link just to show how adaptive and deceiving our eyes are take a look at how quickly and easily we adapt to chromatic differences: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/scienc...Beh_p008.shtml

[venchka]

Don't give up Renae!

Shoot film. Let somebody else worry about color correction.

Shoot black & white film. Fuhgettabout color.

[carrbowl]

Originally Posted by venchka

Don't give up Renae!

Shoot film. Let somebody else worry about color correction.

Shoot black & white film. Fuhgettabout color.

Thanks Wayne, I like the idea of it...but still....I kind of would like to not have them all over the place!!! Maybe someday I'll be as smart as you and get to film!!

[venchka]

Pay no attention to me...except

Get yourself some Kodak 18% gray cards. The kind with gray on one side and white on the other. Have your subjects hold the white side close to their face. Take a picture. Set custom white balance to make the card white. As long as your light doesn't change a lot, your white balance will be fine and you can always use the card for setting white balance in Photoshop. Use the eyedropper thingie.

I find that Lightroom does a good job picking up the correct white balance with the eyedropper.

Good luck!

[carrbowl]

and there in lies the problem with these particular photos..the light was always changing... yes I have two different white balance options...just need to use them...DUH!! Thanks Wayne...I appreciate your input....to my "personal issue"!!!