Photos always coming out too redish.

[Lightsped]

My parents living room has pale yellow walls and kind of pinkish/red sofas. I am not crazy about the color scheme....

Anyways, every time I shoot in their living room my photos always come out overly red with somewhat heavy saturation. I have tried reducing the red/orange tones using lightroom. I have also tried reducing the saturation.

Never can get the photos to look good. Attached is an edited photo that I tried reducing the overly red/orange tones.

Using full frame Nikon with Pro grade 2.8 lenses.

Any ideas?

 

[480sparky]

What does the original look like? What's the white balance setting? What is lighting the scene....specifically, what's the color temp of the light source(s)?

 

[Lightsped]

I am at work now and don't have an original of that exact photo. But here is a photo or two made in the same room at a different time.

WB is set to auto. Body is D800 Nikon.

If I do any somewhat dark restaurant photos they often come out overly red/orange too.

 

[ac12]

The problem is any light is reflecting off colored walls and furniture, will pick up the color of the walls and furniture.
In this situation, I would change the WB to tungsten, and see if that helps. IF all the lights are standard incandescent lights.
Or do a custom white balance.

Alternative is a flash, to overpower the ambient light.

 

[DarkShadow]

Why not use the kelvins custom white balance to match your lighting source of the room. I use often outdoors sometimes when the AWB doesn't render blues correctly Nikon cough cough.

 

[480sparky]

Looks a lot like your WB is set for daylight or sunlight.

 

[Lightsped]

Yeah, I have never tinkered with WB much. I will try the Kelvins scale next time I am over at their house. 3500k looks to be a good starting point.

As for current photos, is there anything I can do to "fix" photos already made?

Thanks for info.

 

[ac12]

Yeah, I have never tinkered with WB much. I will try the Kelvins scale next time I am over at their house. 3500k looks to be a good starting point.

As for current photos, is there anything I can do to "fix" photos already made?

Thanks for info.

You can try removing color cast, to get white to look white.
But I found sometimes it works great, other times not so well.

 

[Lightsped]

Is removing color cast the same thing as clicking the WB feature on Lightroom and pressing "w", then searching for a part of the image that should be white?

 

[TreeofLifeStairs]

Yeah, I have never tinkered with WB much. I will try the Kelvins scale next time I am over at their house. 3500k looks to be a good starting point.

As for current photos, is there anything I can do to "fix" photos already made?

Thanks for info.

Most home lights are around 2700k. I can’t stand my home being that yellow though so I switch all my bulbs out for 4000k bulbs. 5000k is much more widely available but it’s just a little too white for my taste.

Anyway, to me it looks purely like a white balance issue. If you shoot in raw then it’s easy to adjust it with the sliders. JPG is a bit more difficult though.

 

[smoke665]

Save Raw files and ideally get a get something like this VelloWhite Balance Card Set (Medium) . In lieu of a target, a white card, foam plate, etc will work, but in difficult lighting situations, the gray or black can give better color. Either at the start or finish of the series, take a shot of your target. In LR, highlight all photos in the series including your target. In the develop module go to the target image, first check your histogram to determine if you need to adjust the exposure slider, then use the WB eye dropper tool to click on the white, gray or black target. Watch your color temperature settings and the image to decide which one is best. Once you settled on the best setting, make sure all images are highlighted, then in the bottom left of the develop pane, click on Synch Button. In the pop up window, clear all the check marks except White Balance, then hit okay. Everything will now be set to the same WB. You may still need to tweak your WB, individually or as a whole, to get what actually looks good for the image. The only slider you should be adjusting before you set the WB is the exposure, as an under/over exposed image can affect the WB setting. Once you have WB set then go to the basic panel, adjusting contrast, highlights, shadows, whites and blacks. If you hold the alt key while adjusting the white and black sliders it will mask the image so you can see the exact maximum/minimum settings for each. Then go to clarity, vibrance and saturation. Then the tone curve adjustments. If you still have a color cast, use the drop down menu in the tone curve to select each color channel. By dragging the line up or down you can change the global colors of the image, adjustments work just like the RGB curve in shadows, midtones and highlights. It's very sensitive so use a light touch. Only after you do all of the above should you think about adjustments in the HSL panel.

 

[Strodav]

I always keep a small, hand size gray card and/or an X-Rite Passport color target with me. I try to remember to take a shot of it under ambient light. My PP software allows you show it a neutral gray and it will color balance from there. Problem solved. You also want to make sure your color monitor is srgb calibrated. Both X-Rite and Datacolor make monitor calibration devices.

 

[TCampbell]

A neutral "gray card" would typically solve this. An X-Rite Color Checker is even better (but usually a simple gray-card takes care of it as long as you aren't shooting with "mixed" lighting(e.g. some daylight through the windows and some tungsten lamp).

To fix these after-the-fact, use an editor with white-balance adjustment and click something you believe is meant to be a true "white" color (the white paint on the trim moldings might work). This will let the software determine the color imbalance so it can "subtract" it from all of the pixels and that usually does the trick.

 

[dxqcanada]

LR - Auto/Auto

 

[Alex Dumitrescu]

My parents living room has pale yellow walls and kind of pinkish/red sofas. I am not crazy about the color scheme....

Anyways, every time I shoot in their living room my photos always come out overly red with somewhat heavy saturation. I have tried reducing the red/orange tones using lightroom. I have also tried reducing the saturation.

Never can get the photos to look good. Attached is an edited photo that I tried reducing the overly red/orange tones.

Using full frame Nikon with Pro grade 2.8 lenses.

Any ideas?

If you shoot RAW your problem is easily solvable. You can set the white balance fine tuning the sliders in LR. Then when you're pleased with the result, you can set that specific photo as a target for the rest of the photos take in the same ambient light.