Fixing Color

[supraman215]

I am a newb and still making a lot of mistakes that I don't realize till after the photo is taken. This was one of the better shots I had but as you can see the WB was WAY off so I tried to fix it in GIMP. How did I do? does it need more? Did I do too much? I don't feel like I have an eye for this yet.
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[Cedar]

Just a stab at it.

Essentially you want to mess with hue saturation and exposure settings mixed in with a little contrast.

 

[D.MoralesPhoto]

Well, I think your second (PP'd) pic is a step in the right direction.

For WB issues, the way I look at it is:

Find a spot on the image that you KNOW should be white (pure white if it were possible). After you're done adjusting the WB, if that spot is white, the rest of it should look right too (of course there are things that may keep this from being right, like multiple (different colored) light sources, but for this shot I think it would work).

You can also use a "click for WB" tool if you have one (I don't use GIMP, so I don't know if it has it or not) and just click on a spot you know should be white.

Honestly I think your second one needs a touch more brightness, but not a whole lot. The patterns on the dress seem to stand out quite a bit to me, so I'm not sure how you could handle that. Otherwise, I think you did a pretty good job correcting it overall.

 

[BuS_RiDeR]

This is my 2 cents...

Using Gimp, I did Auto White Balance and adjusted the Brightness and contrast a bit...

As an afterthought... I wondered what it would look like in Black & White... With a bit of a tighter crop and a black border...

 

[mJs]

is this a bit truer?

I made it much warmer in adobe raw, then adjusted the levels, exposure and contrast....

 

[JasonLambert]

What I would normally do is use Auto Levels... You should have something like that in gimp. Then play around a little bit to get the look you want.

Bus did a good job with the edit but play around a bit. Use the Auto features but don't just leave it up to the program to decide what your photo should look like.

Also, I don't know much about Nikon but does your camera have a custom WB mode? If so use it! It makes post a whole lot quicker. I don't have a gray board to set my WB with so I just use my my sock. I found out that my "white" socks OOF works well. It only takes 10 seconds or so and you look great doing it! lol

 

[katy625]

here is my go at it if you don't mind. I took your second pic which was a vast improvement from the first...then i ran it through ps elements 7 using the auto color correction then i adjusted the shadows/highlights then I reduced the noise of the pic to smooth it out a bit.

 

[myfotoguy]

Nice work Mark (BuS). Good idea with the black and white as an alternative too. I have saved a few photos where I totally forgot to change the WB (pre RAW days) that way.

Black and white is a nice save for really bad hot spots, and other odd things difficult to edit out in a color picture.

 

[BuS_RiDeR]

Nice work Mark (BuS). Good idea with the black and white as an alternative too.

Thank you.