lighthound Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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RustyBug wrote:
Personally, I use color balance tool in PS on a layer.
I prefer being able to separately / independintly adjust color in the shadows, mids, highs.
There are other ways, but they act on a global basis rather than a selective basis already built in. Of course, you can always use a feathered "blend if" to restrict to a given range (and I do at times).
Some folks use a "color" range in the saturation tool to simply change THAT color, but I find this should be a "last resort" because it doesn't afford for the influence on all colors to occur @ cast influence removal.
This is exactly what I did to try and remove that funky blue at the bottom of the rock and then I got the brilliant idea to start tweaking others that I "thought" were off. I see now that I must resist these kinds of adjustments until I have no other choice but even then I'll probably play it safe and do very minor adjustments. "Less is better" kind of thing.
That may sound a bit contradictory because on one hand I like the separation (low/med/high) but on the other hand I don't like the isolation to a color. The reason for this is that our shadows are often times a different color of light (typically more blue) from out highlights. A global shift of warming shadows, can take highlights too warm. The fact that (when) a scene has mixed lighting, it warrants a "split" adjustment to get all parts neutralized (if that is your goal).
That isn't always the desired objective, but depending on the uniformity of lighting color (or non-uniformity) will suggest which tool you may want to use.
We have multiple tools at our disposal (not well versed in LR, been a few years), so you'll figure out your own way @ tools of choice. Mostly, I ust wanted to share the numeric read capability as an aid. The key to making the numeric aspect work best, is to read your light and choose (which may only be a guess) a good neutral. Sometimes my first "guess" at it turns out to be an errant one, but even then, the process starts to reveal the color puzzle.
I have used the WB eye dropper thingy before where I would start clicking various neutral targets and then just watch to see which ones give me the most repeated common result and then use one of those to establish my WB. This approach sounds similar to what you are describing here with the major exception that I was not watching my RGB values.
One other thing you might consider ... crank up your saturation to 100% (watching as you progress through 50% - 75%) and you can get an easy read on your colors / cast. Armed with the numeric values and the enhanced read through saturation amplification ... you can get your clues more readily than your eyes alone might provide.
I'm not sure I'm getting what you are saying here Kent. Sorry, I'm slow remember.
Are you saying that a another "trick" I could use is to temporarily crank the saturation up to 100% and then move my mouse pointer around on neutral targets to see if the RGB values are still close to being equal and also spot any odd ball colors like that blue on the bottom of the rock and make corrections before dropping the saturation back down?
Here's the 100% supersat of the first image. This makes it easier for me to see the color of the dirt ... some dirt is brown, some is black. Not knowing the area ... it becomes a sleuthing game. Some rocks are neutral, some have color in them. Some bark is grey, some is not. Not having been there ... I'm at the "color blind" disadvantage on what it is supposed to be a bit. Sometimes it isn't a matter of figuring out what it should be ... but a series of deductive reasoning @ what it shouldn't be.
After moving down south I have learned to never trust using the color of the dirt down here because it is (so I've been told) very orange/red from the clay in the soil. This image was shot up in the Smokey mountains not too far from my house and even the water has a funky orange(ish) color in real life and I think it leaves many rocks with a slight discoloration as well. I usually try to make that go away in my images but even that is difficult for me to see.
Then, it is a matter of subjective preference @ S&P to taste.
HTH
...Show more →
Click on the "show more" above as I embedded some questions inside your quote.
So to give me an idea of where I'm at right now, can you and anyone else let me know point blank how my second edit "looks"? Did I completely miss the short bus or is it much improved over my first edit image? Is there still something glaringly wrong with the WB or colors?
Keep in mind that although I'd like to get the "oh wow very nice" type of response on my images, I'm really just trying to make them "reasonable" such that you folks don't think "OMG those colors and WB aren't even close to being right, what the hell is he thinking".
And thanks for the help and your patience with all this.
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