Colors and lighting never match exactly what my eye sees

[snapsnap1973]

Hi.

I may have asked this a long time ago, but it bothers me that the colors that I see with my eyes is never what ends up in the picture. The lighting is off too usually from what I see and what comes out in the photo.

For example, I have a beautiful vibrant red jacket hanging in my closet and snapped a pic last night and it comes out a very washed out red or a dull red, not the pretty vibrant red that my jacket is.

How do you go about getting the EXACT shade and color in the picture to match what your naked eye sees?

 

[Ysarex]

You control the creation of the photo start to finish.

You get the camera exposure right and you get the processing right. I don't know what you're doing right now, but I'll make an assumption that you're handing some degree (maybe all) of that process over to the automation built into your camera.

Your camera's automated systems do a fair job. If you want better you'll have to take over.

Joe

 

[bribrius]

more light and nice lenses known for having good color. Or if you want to save a lot of money my kids thirty dollar point and shoot has better color than my Nikon dslr half the time.

light gives color. It doesn't exist without light.

 

[Light Guru]

FIRST you need to calibrate your monitor and second once you have your lighting set up you take s photo photo with a color chart that has known color values. Then on the computer you adjust the image of the color chart do it is correct. You then copy those adjustments and apply them to your photo of the red jacket.

X-Rite sells both the monitor calibrator and color chart.

 

[qleak]

First you should be aware that human perception is not what a camera captures. That is your mind interprets the raw visual data from your eyes. Your mind can interpret the red as vibrant even under lighting conditions where it doesn't stand out as much Understanding how human perception differs from photography is the greatest step in visualization.

Secondly, the human eye has far more dynamic range than any camera.

Third, to get really stunning vibrant pictures you need spectral highlights. If the light is too flat your picture will be dull and uninteresting.

Fourth, human perception on objects is much more precise than a photo since we have 2 eyes and they will typically only be focusing together on a small area. A camera will focus on an entire plane. To make pictures more intuitive to human perception it's often best to have a strong central subject composed in the frame to draw the eyes in.

After that, you can match colors in a forensic manner from picture through printing by doing color calibration. This will involve color charts, a calibrated display and printer.

 

[vintagesnaps]

Hanging in your closet? Did you photograph it there in the existing room light? You know the jacket's vibrant red, but in probably relatively low indoor light the camera most likely wouldn't record the color as rich as it would be able to do in brighter light.

 

[bratkinson]

The respondents above all gave very good explanations of why the 'not so bright' colors your camera produces. All of which accurately indicate some of the issues. Based on the limited information provided, I and the others assume you are using the camera in full 'Auto' mode and letting the camera determine what the colors 'should be'.

One issue not covered by the others is white balance. As indicated above, letting your camera automatically choose a white balance (AWB) is frequently 'pretty good', but there's times it fails miserably...especially indoors. The result is the picture is too yellow, or too blue, or too <whatever>. Accurately setting white balance either in the camera or in post processing produces far better WB results. Learning to use a grey card and setting a customer white balance in the camera (CWB) is one solution. But every change in lighting 'mix' requires a new CWB setting.

For what it's worth, I recently took some pictures of a friends home and to my dismay, discovered that florescent lights in one room were 'spilling over' into the next room, partially lit by incandescent lights and some sunlight. Getting all three areas with different illumination sources in one picture is virtually impossible to get accurate color renditions in each room in a single shot. My/their eyes see everything accurately as our brain can adjust for the differences. Cameras apply a single white balance setting for the entire picture. The best I could do in post processing was to choose a reasonable compromise WB and then fiddle with individual colors and get a 'presentable' picture, although some of the colors are a bit screwy.

Also mentioned previously is getting a fairly good exposure. Overexposure will make everything appear 'washed out' and faded. That could be the issue as well.

In short, as much as one would want all their cameras to be simply 'point and shoot', the more the camera does automatically, the more likely it will not pick the best results under other-than-outdoors, sunlit situations. That's why post processing is needed to adjust what the camera recorded to 'fit' what we actually saw or what we pictured in our mind.

 

[snapsnap1973]

Thanks all! Today I manually adjustedt the WB using a piece of white paper and I got better match for colors. Yes, the jacket was in my room and my room was very dimply lit, so I guess that explains the "vibrant red" jacket thing.

Like I said, the room was dimly lit and I was messing around with my new camera and I decided to snap that "vibrant red" jacket in my closet. Well, my eyes saw it as a pretty vibrant red and like I said it came out a different shade of red than what my eyes saw.

I bet if I were outside on a sunny day the red would be closer, I'll have to test it someday!

 

[KmH]

Hi.
Colors and lighting never match exactly what my eye sees

And they never will, until you take the time to understand how your camera works so you can set up the camera so it can make a photo as close as is possible.

The camera does not work like your eyes do, and your brain makes adjustments to what you see you're not consciously aware of.

So by knowing how the camera works you can make the necessary adjustments that will compensate for the difference between the way you see and the way the camera sees.