How to represent true colours?

gayle23

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Wandering if anyone can help me quickly. I've been taking photos of clothes to sell on ebay, I have a vibrant bright emerald green dress which in my pictures when I play them back is coming out like a dull mossy green. How can I get it to capture the actual colour? It just got me wandering and I couldn't work it out.
 
First; make sure the white balance is correct for the type of lighting you are using. You should be using only one type of light for the exposure.

Second; match the edited colors to the playback display. (For this you may have to adjust the colors beyond what looks "normal" on your computer, depending on what display you are using.) Keep making those adjustments until it works.
 
Shoot in raw.

Use a gray card to set your white balance in post.

Calibrate your monitor.

















And for God's sake, use Kodak film!

 
A single "bad" photo example with intact EXIF information could likely help you get a good diagnosis of what is going wrong. For example...are you using a Nikon camera and a yellow color-rendering Sigma lens? Are you using some wonky flourescent lights from Cowboy studio? Are you shooting in AUTO white balance with Incandescent lamps? And so on and so on...there could be one, or more, basic errors in the process. The members of TPF could tell **a lot** if they could look at a picture, or two, and then look at the EXIF information. Also, so details about the lighting, or the room,etc.. would be helpful.
 
First; make sure the white balance is correct for the type of lighting you are using. You should be using only one type of light for the exposure.

Second; match the edited colors to the playback display. (For this you may have to adjust the colors beyond what looks "normal" on your computer, depending on what display you are using.) Keep making those adjustments until it works.
Hi thanks, yes I made sure I was only using the natural window light as I learned that using the room lights can make a picture yellowy. I'm not sure what you mean in saying match the edited colours?
 
A single "bad" photo example with intact EXIF information could likely help you get a good diagnosis of what is going wrong. For example...are you using a Nikon camera and a yellow color-rendering Sigma lens? Are you using some wonky flourescent lights from Cowboy studio? Are you shooting in AUTO white balance with Incandescent lamps? And so on and so on...there could be one, or more, basic errors in the process. The members of TPF could tell **a lot** if they could look at a picture, or two, and then look at the EXIF information. Also, so details about the lighting, or the room,etc.. would be helpful.
Okay thanks, so I stupidly deleted the bad photo from yesterday before thinking it might be useful. But just went up and took another quickly, though the light is different today. I will post that up soon. The colour still not as green and vibrant as the dress.
I took the photo with natural window light with the room lights turned off. It was quite a bright day. What does EXIF mean and where do I find that information? Does it mean what sutter speed/Iso/apertue? I'm using a Nikon 50mm 1.8 lens. Gonna try to check if white balance is on auto now.
 
do you understand about color space?
Do you know how to compensate for the ambient light?
Umm, I'm not sure, don't think I understand colour space. In terms of compensating for ambient light I've recently been learning a bit about exposure compensation and I learned about how a camera will represent a black screen as grey and a white screen as grey in an attempt to find a middle ground (I think) then you use exposure compensation to either over or under compose to get the actual colour. Is that anything to do with what you mean?
 
A single "bad" photo example with intact EXIF information could likely help you get a good diagnosis of what is going wrong. For example...are you using a Nikon camera and a yellow color-rendering Sigma lens? Are you using some wonky flourescent lights from Cowboy studio? Are you shooting in AUTO white balance with Incandescent lamps? And so on and so on...there could be one, or more, basic errors in the process. The members of TPF could tell **a lot** if they could look at a picture, or two, and then look at the EXIF information. Also, so details about the lighting, or the room,etc.. would be helpful.
Yes my camera is set to auto white balance, I've never fiddled with the white balance before.
 
If there is mixed light - fluorescents and/tungsten and/or daylight, the camera gets confused about what tints and balance the light is.
You can simplify things by taking the items into a space where there is one source of light, preferably not fluorescent or these new bulbs. Open shade, natural light is good because its simple and the camera can understand.
If the color is still too far off to correct, learn to shoot raw and to set a custom white balance.
 
To get accurate colors you should be shooting with a color chart and editing on a calibrated monitor.

But even if you do all of that you are posting them on ebay and you have absolutely no control over the screens that people are looking at ebay on. So do your best to get it close and then don't worry about it to much.
 
Wandering if anyone can help me quickly. I've been taking photos of clothes to sell on ebay, I have a vibrant bright emerald green dress which in my pictures when I play them back is coming out like a dull mossy green. How can I get it to capture the actual colour? It just got me wandering and I couldn't work it out.


Sorry, there is not fast answer, but I can make the answer short:

1) If the color is within the target gamut, very probably sRGB ECI Downloads [ECI.ORG] you simply calibrate your light / camera setup with a color checker and use the calibration of your RAW converter (ACR and PN offer calibration, other RAW converters too)

2) If the color is outside the target gamut you have to cheat and test color variations in different Browsers and Operating systems on a calibrated output system until it resembles the original.

I shot shirts for a living. I know what I am talking about.
 
Yes, Frank, that response was well within the understandability range of someone who who doesn't know what exif means.

Gayle23

This is quite a bit like trying to do surgery over the phone.
Rather than trying to teach you the entire issue when all you have is a question, just send me one of the ugly unaltered pictures without doing anything to it.
I'll post the picture here with all the required information which is actually embedded in the picture. (EXIF)

My email is [email protected].

Lew
 
Ask a scientist and the answer might bei 100% correct and 100% useless ;-)
 
Ask a scientist and the answer might bei 100% correct and 100% useless ;-)

As a former bench scientist, I might take slight umbrage at that remark yet agree that it might be too true too often.

My attitude has always been that nothing I write should be understandable by someone with less than their course work complete and who is working on their dissertation, otherwise my reputation suffers. :1219:
 

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