I'm an architect. I taking photos of a construction project every day from a permanently positiined tripod head. I want to assemble a sort of time lapse sequence in the end. However, I shoot the pics at different times of day, and the weather changes, of course, so the color and contrast vary widely. Is there an automated way in photoshop to bring these kinds of values closer together across many photos?
Roy, I don't know of any automated way to do it, although others may. A couple of ways to manually do it would be to include a gray card (or some other neutral object) that can be cropped out of the scene to allow PS to do an automatic white balance (suppose you could create an action to do that). Alternatively, if you have a Macbeth ColorChecker, you could include that in the scene and build a custom camera profile for every image (quite a bit more work).
However, I question whether you really should try to make all the images look like they were shot under the same conditions. When I see time lapse photography, I like to see the lighting change due to weather and seasonal changes. It makes it seem more realistic (to me).
You can open your first photo with the layers and adjustments within them visible. Then open your new photo and drag and drop the adjustment layers right on top of the new photo. They will auto adjust to the changes/corrections you made on your first photo. Do this with each new photo and they should all match pretty well.
Roy Pertchik wrote:
I'm an architect. I taking photos of a construction project every day from a permanently positiined tripod head. I want to assemble a sort of time lapse sequence in the end. However, I shoot the pics at different times of day, and the weather changes, of course, so the color and contrast vary widely. Is there an automated way in photoshop to bring these kinds of values closer together across many photos?
Thanks ;^)
You can try to use Match Color command, which can be found under Image-> Adjustments.
Or you may also manually do color corrections for each image.
BobCollette wrote:
However, I question whether you really should try to make all the images look like they were shot under the same conditions. When I see time lapse photography, I like to see the lighting change due to weather and seasonal changes. It makes it seem more realistic (to me).
I agree - time lapse should show the passing of ... time. Don't let the technical photographer or precise architect in yourself be too concerned about 'exacting' everything.
I think it can be done...but with alot of work both from camera settings and alot of manual post production in PS. Save yourself that world of hurt (time) and enjoy your creation of time compression.
If you can paint something that will be in the scene from start to end a reference color (medium grey, white, etc.), this would be ideal. It can be a sign, fence or anything. It does not have to be large or even noticeable. Shoot in RAW and use this reference to white balance your shots. You can create a Photoshop action to apply a consistent set of adjustments (curves adjustment layer for contrast, etc.) and run all of the shot through this action.
One approach would be to place a gray card in the foreground somewhere you can later crop or clone it out which will allow you to click correct the images to get them in sync. Another would be setting Custom WB off the gray card in the same light as the construction site before shooting which would eliminate the need to have the card in the shot. The better approach would be a combination of the two. Set Custom WB and include the gray card in the corner of the shot as a reference you can check and click correct with the eyedropper when editing.
