Help with color balance

I took this photo yesterday and just want to get a few eyes on the white balance/color.  It looks warm on my monitor and cool on others.  I know I need to bet my monitor calibrated, so I wanted to see what others thought and if they made adjustments what it would look like on my monitor.

Thanks in advance.



Cool on my monitor which is also backed up by the skin tone numbers.

Ronny

I don't have the RAW of this particular photo, but I do of another.  If anyone has the time and inclination to adjust to what looks good on their monitor I would appreciate for comparison.

File here:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxxubY83KsaqTHd1VVNCWEVZS0U/edit?usp=sharing

I adjusted the colour temperature in Adobe Camera Raw only, to make this which compares well with skin tone images I use.

I have ONLY given attention to the skin tones rather than considering the overall white balance on its own but the right-most lady's T shirt looks good and the dress on the left-most is a little 'creamier'.

Cheers, Tony.

A little on the cool side on my monitor also, warmed the up slightly, changed some of the background , the corrugated iron didn't do them any justice, very pretty ladies by the way.

Regards Patsym

It looks on the cool side on my monitor.  I adjusted the endpoints of the R,G and B channels in levels and warmed it up.  I also did it by using the neutral gray dropper and selecting a light portion of the grey stripes on the black/gray striped dress.  The results of the two methods were very similar.

Regards....Allen

I agree with Ronny.  It is a tad bit on the cool side, but honestly not that far off.  I used Photoshop and the 50% gray technique to find neutral gray and it had very little change.  Might have added a tad bit or warmth, but really not that much difference.  Try a boost of saturation to see if you like that change.  It worked on my end.

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Slider44

Exactly Allen.

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Slider44

Same here,  a  little cool on my calibrated monitor.

Buzz

Start using the custom white balance, see http://youtu.be/ZHgEBsw3svY?t=6s

Slightly cool/blue on my monitor too, but very close. Here is a play.

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Only when you can criticize yourself, should you criticize others. Mikes.

background is cool(corrugated tin) and 3 of the girls are wearing cool clothing.  Image is

slightly under exposed too, which will contribute to coolness.  Warmed it up with Kodak

Pro SHO(shadows highlights) filter.  gc

In this edit I kept your your bg (cool), but warmed up foreground. Hope it helps.

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Claude

Dupe layer>apply image>green>subtract>mask>blue>OK>change layer blend mode

to color dodge>layer>new sel col adj layer>red>green slider to left to taste>black

slider to left to taste.  gc

Beautiful photo.

As everyone else has pointed out the image is too cool; even with an uncalibrated monitor you can check this for yourself by finding the Highlight, Shadow, and Neutral points in the image.  I used an action I created to automatically find those three points and the Highlights read 213, 241, 255 indicating that Red is underrepresented in the brighter tones.

You can use a variety of methods ranging from the mundane to the exotic to correct the colors ...for example Google "Color Correction by the numbers" for use on uncalibrated monitors.  You can also correct it manually but in this particular case the Neutral point isn't the best (though accurate) so manual correction would revolve entirely around fixing the Shadow and Highlight points.

The easiest method of color correction in this particular photo is to use the Auto Color function in Photoshop.  It is not enabled by default but it is simple to configure; just open a Levels or Curves adjustment layer, ALT + Click on the Auto button, and select "Find Dark & Light Colors" and "Snap Neutral Midtones" in the dialog box, then click OK.

Here's the result of using the Auto Color function in Photoshop.  As a final touchup I added a mask to the photo that restricted the color correction only to the four ladies so that they "pop" from the cooler background, and I used the Burn tool to darken parts of the white shirt on the right to make it less distracting.  There's more that could be done but I wanted to demonstrate a simple method of quickly correcting color.

GCam.... washed out on my calibrated monitors

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washed out again... I think your monitor is too dark and you are compensating by bringing up levels too much.

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What color space is the image saved to for the image you are viewing and it appears too warm?

And... what monitor are you viewing this on? Brand and model please?

i.e. Is this an AdobeRGB image you are viewing on a standard sRGB gamut monitor?

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I adjusted the photo for skin tones which now look about in the right range on my calibrated monitor. Good idea to have yours calibrated.  Best, Art