Archive 2015 · Purple Flowers

georgetd
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Purple Flowers

I'm having trouble with the shot. The color of the flower pedals just seems off, like I pasted the flower in the image (which is not what happened). I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas on how to get the colors a little more natural looking.

Jul 13, 2015 at 02:42 AM

RustyBug

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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Purple Flowers

I think your WB is off ... but the challenge is going to be that you don't have anything that is a trustworthy neutral in the scene from which to evaluate.

Looking to the shadows and the bokeh, it looks like there is a cyanic color to the skylight ... inferring that (sans direct lighting w/ strong shadows) your lighting was some influence of open sky color.

Given that cyan is some weighted combination of green & blue, then the antidote would be some weighted combination of magenta & yellow. That's where I'd start exploring to glean an understanding of the scene's lighting as you make experimental adjustments.

Slowly crank the saturation to 100% ... it may make it easier to see the color influence in play as you ratchet it upward.

Probably better to work off the raw, but here's a rough stab, mostly a global hue adjustment (I landed @ +15) and some tweaks to tone down the background (which may help offset that "pasted" look, since the flower and the background are so opposing in hue). Still not really where I'd like to have it, but sans a good reference, this one may take some experimenting to get it really dialed in.

I shoot a lot of ambient without using a reference, but this is one that would definitely be worth using a reference (gray card, color checker, Whi-Bal, Expo-disc, etc.) in a future reshoot.

Jul 13, 2015 at 06:50 AM

georgetd
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Purple Flowers

I messed around with the white balance some more, maybe it helped a little. I also messed a bit with the curves for the highlights of the blue channel. It's still not where I think it should be, but it's looking a little more purple. I rechecked the raw, and it looks like the flower isn't (quite) saturated, but definitely exposed a bit to the right.

The image is where I am with the picture now, which isn't too far from where I started. If you'd like to play with the raw, you can download here

Jul 13, 2015 at 08:28 AM

Camperjim
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Purple Flowers

I changed the WB by opening in camera raw and selecting one of the strongest white spots in the background for a neutral point. I was content with the WB but I did not care for the bokeh and I took the processing in a different direction. This is pretty sloppy since I did not have the patience to do a careful selection. Anyway this is the direction I would go:

Jul 13, 2015 at 08:50 AM

ben egbert
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Purple Flowers

Just got here and the first thing I saw was a crop like your last crop. You know me and colors, most anything looks ok to me. Nice image.

Jul 13, 2015 at 09:03 AM


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