I edited it one more time, with a change in contrast/brightness to the corner/side grass areas to reduce the contrast/attention of the shadow from the flash, so it doesn't pull you there so noticeably ... hopefully to retain your attention on the group ... who btw looks like they were having a good time.
Thanks RustyBug. You've shown that compositing two images with different color temps will probably give me the best results. I'm off to rescue about 20 images now....
Your welcome. Shouldn't be too bad once you get things dialed in a bit.
The the pics you posted do a nice job of showing what happens when you try to address mixed lighting with a global solution.
A) Much Too Warm/Neutral
B) Much Too Cool/Neutral
C) Slightly Warm/Slightly Cool
The only way to address mixed lighting is to either match the lighting so that you no longer have mixed lighting, or perform selective corrections in post ... global correction just won't get it. C) may kinda "split the difference" to a place that may be tolerable, but it just won't be bringing the most out of your image. But, if you have to choose between one or the other ... typically I'd go with whatever flatters your subject best, as neutral may or may not achieve that.
>>Your welcome. Shouldn't be too bad once you get things dialed in a bit.
I think I've got it wired now: I'll white balance for the subject in Aperture and export, then disable the white balance and export again and composite in another app (probably Pixelmator...which I've begun to like a bit...it's not as "heavy" as Photoshop).
I feel like I had the right idea with gelling my lights but failed in the execution. As I mentioned earlier I know I failed to set my white balance on camera to match my gel. However I can't figure out if using CTO was the right call either--so I may have shot myself in the foot to begin with.
>>global correction just won't get it, except that C) will kinda "split the difference" to a place that may be tolerable, but it just won't be bringing the most out of your image.
Agreed. I feel like the BG was captured accurately. Given this as a baseline, what would you have done with the strobes? How could I have matched the lighting to eliminate the mixed lighting effect?
ppmax wrote:
...I feel like I had the right idea with gelling my lights but failed in the execution. ...I can't figure out if using CTO was the right call... I feel like the BG was captured accurately. Given this as a baseline, what would you have done with the strobes? How could I have matched the lighting to eliminate the mixed lighting effect?
To my eye (and every photographer has his own style) it looks like the color correction was just too strong, and the subjects were also over-flashed compared to the BG.
Just reducing the CTO to a 1/2 CTO or 1/4 CTO might have been enough color correction, and maybe even none at all. (Back to WB for the people, and let the BG do it's own thing in this case.)
Here's what it might have looked like with un-gelled flash and -1/2 stop FEC:
Yep, the main A flash was definitely too hot...I think I was overcompensating because my other B flash wasnt firing...but I didnt realize that until reviewing the images today. My EXIF says I punched the flash up 1.3 EV...you were right on the money.
Here's a test composite using your technique. I burned the harsh shadows in the grasses and punched up the saturation in the sunset. Certainly better than the origs or either "global" WB fix. Fussing with brushed-in WB fixes in Lightroom was a hassle and wasnt giving me good results.
