Argh.... issues with colour C&C

FemFugler · Mar 17, 2010

Argh... colour issues I took these this afternoon and i guess it wasn't the greatest spot to be taking picture because the colours are just blah. I can't get them right. I took a bunch but I'll only post a few. I'm sorry for more dog pictures, i know those are dreaded here. Also does it make a difference with RAW? i had forgotten my camera was set on RAW from the other day when i was playing around with it. I converted them to JPG but still... If anyone can help me or give me some pointers on getting the colour right it would be greatly appreciated. I have Lightroom, Photoshop cs2, gimp, and photoscape.... I did these in just lightroom though.

Sorry the pics are so big... i didn't resize them in case anyone wanted to edit the colours....

I think the first one is a better picture and the colours match more but something still seems off... maybe its jut all the similar colours together... I'll see if i can find a picture that isnt messed up of the dog to show and compare.

DennyCrane · Mar 17, 2010

It's hard to really guess here without having seen the dog or the background, but at a guess... maybe the white balance is off? Seems a little warm. I did a little edit where I tweaked the balance and slightly sharpened it.

KmH · Mar 17, 2010

It doesn't help that the background is almost the same color as the dog.

FemFugler · Mar 17, 2010

anddd here's an picture of him from a few summers ago taken with a P&S but you can see his colours here:

This is one of the original ones. I think i must have been half asleep today or something. On the screen the exposure looked fine, even possibly a tad over exposed but i left it because it was already sort of high. Then i when i upload it it's like under exposed. I don't know, i was doing it in natural light, hand held, with no flash in RAW. But anyway there's the pic so you can see the differences.

Ugh it's difficult to shoot outside because it's always cloudy, the days are never decent. Another difficult thing is shooting the dog! I had wanted him against the brown house siding which is darker than his fur wand would have been better, not the door which is just blah and very close to his colour. It was all i could do to get him to stay still there though, i couldn't even get picture of him head on! I can't tell you how many pictures i have of just blur because he moved his head.

I think i should stop doing animals. lol

LBPhotog · Mar 17, 2010

Fem:

I like the color variation that KMH did, I think that he was right in the idea that the color was just too similar in the wood siding ... without a few lights there to separate the subject from the background it was going to be tough ...

Here's another though ... is your monitor color calibrated? I don't want to get into that discussion here but I am sure that if it isn't that's not helping you with anything in these images ... I do like this color variation that you did of the top image that you did in the second post ...

Don't worry, you'll get it, it just take time (and I know that patience isn't one of your strongest virtues ... *LOL* :er::greenpbl::lmao:*)

FemFugler · Mar 18, 2010

LBPhotog said:
Fem:

I like the color variation that KMH did, I think that he was right in the idea that the color was just too similar in the wood siding ... without a few lights there to separate the subject from the background it was going to be tough ...

Here's another though ... is your monitor color calibrated? I don't want to get into that discussion here but I am sure that if it isn't that's not helping you with anything in these images ... I do like this color variation that you did of the top image that you did in the second post ...

Don't worry, you'll get it, it just take time (and I know that patience isn't one of your strongest virtues ... *LOL* :er::greenpbl::lmao:*)

I attempted to calibrate my moniter and then i got side tracked and downloaded cool desktop screen savers.... i got a cool ostrich one...

Overread · Mar 18, 2010

Dog pics are dreaded? Pfffft says who?!

Ok first off screen calibration - I'm guessing (but not sure) that by getting ostrichs on your computer you were using an online screen calibration setup? These don't work and I would say don't bother with them. The reason they don't work is that they rely upon your eyes to make the choices and your eyes are highly adaptive and subjective - we render colour partly based on what we expect to see not just on the light itself and a whole range of other factors come in that just mean that we can't calibrate using our eyes.
The only proper way is to use a hardware based screen calibration system like a Spyder 3. Expensive yes, but the machine is not bias and will read the colour correctly. Infact because our eyes are adaptive when it first does the calibration you will think its gone mad and read the colours wrong - I certainly did for a time till my eyes readapted to the new renderings.

Ok that is the quick and brief colour calibration part - this can get very very complex if you delve into it and I haven't so basics only.

Now onto dogs and RAW. First stage of RAW editing (for me at least) is the two sliders - Temperature and Tint - these set your white balance for the shot and to be honest most of this is a case of adjusting the sliders till the shot looks right. Start with temperature and just move the slider around and get a feel for what its doing to the shot. Keep a close eye on the histogram displayed - you don't want to have a red line rising up on the right hand side (that means you've clipped/overexposed the red channel) so play around and then have a go with tint and adjust both till the shot looks about right (yah ok subjective eyes and all.. but its the best you can do unless you use custom white balance at the time of shooting).

After that adjust the other slides as you choose before exporting the image into general editing. In general editing first thing to break out and play with is levels - auto levels can make quite a difference in removing colour casts - but manual control is a little better (and I have to admit since shooting RAW I find that setting my own white balance in RAW editing my auto levels tends to do nothing at all these days).

If you want more editing advice I recomend these sites here:
Ron Bigelow Articles
Digital Photography Techniques (check the tutorials section as well)

And for an alternative view to editing as well as some good context advice (and its got dogs too!) I recomend watching this video here;
C Brush