Help with color casts on faces, please.

[Andrew Mitchell]

I sometimes have to take photos under the worst criteria for a digital camera: indoors, under fluorescent lights, with flash, in front of a whiteboard! These are photos of my students, for display in the classroom. I print them out at 4"x6". There is nowhere else to take the pictures, as it's dark outside.

As you can imagine, the photos need a fair amount of work on them. I use photoshop 6.0 in the school or Elements at home. I have tried pretty much everything within my limited knowledge (just 2 years with P/S!) but I can't seem to get rid of the color cast of my students' faces. They always show up as very tanned, whereas they are actually much lighter.

I'm sure there is a way of doing this that I just haven't sussed out yet.

Can anyone give me some pointers on this, please. The photo below is straight out of the camera. Thanks.

http://www.pbase.com/image/749422

(The photo is of a class singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".)
--Andrew (in Taiwan)
C-21OOUZ photos at
http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

 

[Leo Salais]

I sometimes have to take photos under the worst criteria for a
digital camera: indoors, under fluorescent lights, with flash, in
front of a whiteboard! These are photos of my students, for display
in the classroom. I print them out at 4"x6". There is nowhere else
to take the pictures, as it's dark outside.

As you can imagine, the photos need a fair amount of work on them.
I use photoshop 6.0 in the school or Elements at home. I have tried
pretty much everything within my limited knowledge (just 2 years
with P/S!) but I can't seem to get rid of the color cast of my
students' faces. They always show up as very tanned, whereas they
are actually much lighter.

I'm sure there is a way of doing this that I just haven't sussed
out yet.

Can anyone give me some pointers on this, please. The photo below
is straight out of the camera. Thanks.

http://www.pbase.com/image/749422

(The photo is of a class singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".)

--
Andrew (in Taiwan)
C-21OOUZ photos at
http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

Andrew:

First off, there is a lot of noise in the blue channel. Use your favorite method for eliminating this noise. A quick and dirty method is to duplicate the layer, blur it with Gaussian Blur about 5-6, then merge the layers.

As for the color cast, one method is to open Levels, click on the black eyedropper, then click it on the known black area in your picture. Do the same with the white eyedropper picking the whitest known part of your picture.

Then I would Image> Adjust> Hue/Saturation and in Edit lighten the red and yellow channels to what you know the correct skin colors to be.

Of course you want to work on a duplicate of your photo.

In the future, you may want to spot meter on a face.

Hope this helps.

Leo

 

[MagicAngel]

Unless my monitor just doesn't show it, there doesn't seem to be much of a color cast to the faces. What color did you think they are?

I sometimes have to take photos under the worst criteria for a
digital camera: indoors, under fluorescent lights, with flash, in
front of a whiteboard! These are photos of my students, for display
in the classroom. I print them out at 4"x6". There is nowhere else
to take the pictures, as it's dark outside.

As you can imagine, the photos need a fair amount of work on them.
I use photoshop 6.0 in the school or Elements at home. I have tried
pretty much everything within my limited knowledge (just 2 years
with P/S!) but I can't seem to get rid of the color cast of my
students' faces. They always show up as very tanned, whereas they
are actually much lighter.

I'm sure there is a way of doing this that I just haven't sussed
out yet.

Can anyone give me some pointers on this, please. The photo below
is straight out of the camera. Thanks.

http://www.pbase.com/image/749422

(The photo is of a class singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".)

--
Andrew (in Taiwan)
C-21OOUZ photos at
http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

 

[Andrew Mitchell]

On both my computers they show up as very dark brown. I'm Caucasion and my Chinese students have about the same skin colour as me, maybe a bit lighter.

I sometimes have to take photos under the worst criteria for a
digital camera: indoors, under fluorescent lights, with flash, in
front of a whiteboard! These are photos of my students, for display
in the classroom. I print them out at 4"x6". There is nowhere else
to take the pictures, as it's dark outside.

As you can imagine, the photos need a fair amount of work on them.
I use photoshop 6.0 in the school or Elements at home. I have tried
pretty much everything within my limited knowledge (just 2 years
with P/S!) but I can't seem to get rid of the color cast of my
students' faces. They always show up as very tanned, whereas they
are actually much lighter.

I'm sure there is a way of doing this that I just haven't sussed
out yet.

Can anyone give me some pointers on this, please. The photo below
is straight out of the camera. Thanks.

http://www.pbase.com/image/749422

(The photo is of a class singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".)

--
Andrew (in Taiwan)
C-21OOUZ photos at
http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

--Andrew (in Taiwan)C-21OOUZ photos at http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

 

[Andrew Mitchell]

I sometimes have to take photos under the worst criteria for a
digital camera: indoors, under fluorescent lights, with flash, in
front of a whiteboard! These are photos of my students, for display
in the classroom. I print them out at 4"x6". There is nowhere else
to take the pictures, as it's dark outside.

As you can imagine, the photos need a fair amount of work on them.
I use photoshop 6.0 in the school or Elements at home. I have tried
pretty much everything within my limited knowledge (just 2 years
with P/S!) but I can't seem to get rid of the color cast of my
students' faces. They always show up as very tanned, whereas they
are actually much lighter.

I'm sure there is a way of doing this that I just haven't sussed
out yet.

Can anyone give me some pointers on this, please. The photo below
is straight out of the camera. Thanks.

http://www.pbase.com/image/749422

(The photo is of a class singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".)

--
Andrew (in Taiwan)
C-21OOUZ photos at
http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

Andrew:

First off, there is a lot of noise in the blue channel. Use your
favorite method for eliminating this noise. A quick and dirty
method is to duplicate the layer, blur it with Gaussian Blur about
5-6, then merge the layers.

I've never tried this, so I'll do it tonight. Do you know where I can find other methods for eliminating noise?

As for the color cast, one method is to open Levels, click on the
black eyedropper, then click it on the known black area in your
picture. Do the same with the white eyedropper picking the whitest
known part of your picture.

This is my usual method, but does not seem to work too well with photos from this particular classroom.

Then I would Image> Adjust> Hue/Saturation and in Edit lighten the
red and yellow channels to what you know the correct skin colors to
be.

I also use this a lot, but find it bleaches out too much of the picture. However, I haven't tried it channel by channel before, so that's something else to try tonight!

Of course you want to work on a duplicate of your photo.

Always, always!

In the future, you may want to spot meter on a face.

It was.

Hope this helps.

Leo

Many thanks, Leo. I'll let you know if I have some success.
--Andrew (in Taiwan)C-21OOUZ photos at http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

 

[MagicAngel]

Oh, so it isn't a color cast at all, their faces are just too dark? Ok, I couldn't find a color cast at all, but I couldn't tell just how brown their faces should be. I'll take a shot a fixing it and let you know.

I sometimes have to take photos under the worst criteria for a
digital camera: indoors, under fluorescent lights, with flash, in
front of a whiteboard! These are photos of my students, for display
in the classroom. I print them out at 4"x6". There is nowhere else
to take the pictures, as it's dark outside.

As you can imagine, the photos need a fair amount of work on them.
I use photoshop 6.0 in the school or Elements at home. I have tried
pretty much everything within my limited knowledge (just 2 years
with P/S!) but I can't seem to get rid of the color cast of my
students' faces. They always show up as very tanned, whereas they
are actually much lighter.

I'm sure there is a way of doing this that I just haven't sussed
out yet.

Can anyone give me some pointers on this, please. The photo below
is straight out of the camera. Thanks.

http://www.pbase.com/image/749422

(The photo is of a class singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".)

--
Andrew (in Taiwan)
C-21OOUZ photos at
http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

--
Andrew (in Taiwan)
C-21OOUZ photos at
http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

 

[Leo Salais]

Andrew:

Sorry, I left out a step in the noise elimination. Should be: duplicate the layer, blur it with Gaussian Blur about 5-6, THEN blend to Color, THEN merge the layers. Sorry. There is an action somewhere in this forum. I'll try to find it and send the info to you.

Leo

 

[Leo Salais]

There is a free noise reducer here: http://www.fredmiranda.com/Action_profilesPage/index.html

 

[MagicAngel]

Ok, I'm having photoshop problems on my laptop, I deleted it to reinstall it, but I left the Serial Number at home, so I will not be able to work on this right away.

Try this. The faces are the problem, so lets fix them alone.

1. Create a new layer
2. Change that layer's blend mode to "Soft Light"
3. Select that new layer.
4. Set your color to white.
5. Select the sprayer.
6. Set the pressure at 10%.
7. Select a sprayer that is about half the size of the faces in the picture.
8. Spray each face enough to lighten them to the correct color.

?

I sometimes have to take photos under the worst criteria for a
digital camera: indoors, under fluorescent lights, with flash, in
front of a whiteboard! These are photos of my students, for display
in the classroom. I print them out at 4"x6". There is nowhere else
to take the pictures, as it's dark outside.

As you can imagine, the photos need a fair amount of work on them.
I use photoshop 6.0 in the school or Elements at home. I have tried
pretty much everything within my limited knowledge (just 2 years
with P/S!) but I can't seem to get rid of the color cast of my
students' faces. They always show up as very tanned, whereas they
are actually much lighter.

I'm sure there is a way of doing this that I just haven't sussed
out yet.

Can anyone give me some pointers on this, please. The photo below
is straight out of the camera. Thanks.

http://www.pbase.com/image/749422

(The photo is of a class singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".)

--
Andrew (in Taiwan)
C-21OOUZ photos at
http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

 

[jbc2]

Can anyone give me some pointers on this, please. The photo below
is straight out of the camera. Thanks.

Andrew (in Taiwan)
C-21OOUZ photos at
http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

In Photoshop Elements:

1. Using magnetic lasso, I selected the students.
2. Using the Levels layer mask, I lightened the students.
3. I cleaned up the mask where the selections weren't quite accurate. I
also restored the yellow to the student in front by erasng that portion
of the mask.
4. Using a small program called "Color Mechanic"
http://www.colormechanic.com/
I changed the color of the faces to what I thought was a more
normal skin tone.

The example is reduced in size to speed downloading.

 

[Willie G.]

Actually Serra, I think you had it right in your previous post. The faces look ok, not very dark at all. Of course the proof is in the printing if that's the final destination for the photo. I looked at it quickly and it just looks to me like the skin tones and the photo overall are too cyan-ish. Cyan is the enemy of skin tones...

I think with this kind of photo it's better to go at the whole thing instead of trying to target different area with airbrushes and lassos.

My first stop in this image would be the curves to set a neutral point because there are lot's of neutral objects to choose from. I'd use the grey eyedropper and click in a few areas to see what works best... But that's just me )

Willie

Ok, I'm having photoshop problems on my laptop, I deleted it to
reinstall it, but I left the Serial Number at home, so I will not
be able to work on this right away.

Try this. The faces are the problem, so lets fix them alone.

1. Create a new layer
2. Change that layer's blend mode to "Soft Light"
3. Select that new layer.
4. Set your color to white.
5. Select the sprayer.
6. Set the pressure at 10%.
7. Select a sprayer that is about half the size of the faces in
the picture.
8. Spray each face enough to lighten them to the correct color.
--Willie G.Kulmbach. GermanyCanon G2 http://www.pbase.com/effzee

 

[MagicAngel]

I think this is way too much work, trying what I suggested would be easier, faster and do just about the same thing in about 1/10th of the time.

However, as was pointed out, curves might be the first stop.

Can anyone give me some pointers on this, please. The photo below
is straight out of the camera. Thanks.

Andrew (in Taiwan)
C-21OOUZ photos at
http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

In Photoshop Elements:

1. Using magnetic lasso, I selected the students.
2. Using the Levels layer mask, I lightened the students.
3. I cleaned up the mask where the selections weren't quite
accurate. I
also restored the yellow to the student in front by erasng that
portion
of the mask.
4. Using a small program called "Color Mechanic"
http://www.colormechanic.com/
I changed the color of the faces to what I thought was a more
normal skin tone.

The example is reduced in size to speed downloading.

 

[Willie G.]

I opened it in Photoshop and indeed it was very, very dark. The whole image, though, not just the faces. I lightended it with a curves layer set to "Luminance" and it looked pretty good. But when I posted it online to pbase, it was too light. Funny, I assigned sRGB to it and saved it w/o a color profile, so I'm not sure what happened...

I'm not postng a link to my version because it looks crappy, lol...

Oh, what the heck:



ttfn

W

I think this is way too much work, trying what I suggested would be
easier, faster and do just about the same thing in about 1/10th of
the time.--Willie G.Kulmbach. GermanyCanon G2 http://www.pbase.com/effzee

 

[MagicAngel]

It doesn't look bad, but I still think that the faces were the problem and because of the poor lighting, simply adjusting the curves might not be enough. I still think that just lighting the faces will make the picture look overall better, but I can't prove that until I get home to a working copy of Photoshop.

I'm not postng a link to my version because it looks crappy, lol...

Oh, what the heck:



ttfn

W

I think this is way too much work, trying what I suggested would be
easier, faster and do just about the same thing in about 1/10th of
the time.

--
Willie G.
Kulmbach. Germany
Canon G2
http://www.pbase.com/effzee

 

[Dxomas]

Andrew,
If you use the Selective Color in PS 6.0, You cab adjust the cast.

Be subtle in you're adjustments, if need be, go back two or three times to make adjustments. A little is better then alot.

The Color you need to adjust is the Red in Yellow and Yellow in Yellow. If the Reds begin to change you can always go back and adjust Red in Red and Yellow in Red.... Good Luck

http://www.pbase.com/image/749422

(The photo is of a class singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".)

--
Andrew (in Taiwan)
C-21OOUZ photos at
http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

 

[Willie G.]

If you only targeted the students with a layer mask, why did the colors in general become more (over?) saturated?

Willie

Can anyone give me some pointers on this, please. The photo below
is straight out of the camera. Thanks.

Andrew (in Taiwan)
C-21OOUZ photos at
http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

In Photoshop Elements:

1. Using magnetic lasso, I selected the students.
2. Using the Levels layer mask, I lightened the students.
3. I cleaned up the mask where the selections weren't quite
accurate. I
also restored the yellow to the student in front by erasng that
portion
of the mask.
4. Using a small program called "Color Mechanic"
http://www.colormechanic.com/
I changed the color of the faces to what I thought was a more
normal skin tone.

The example is reduced in size to speed downloading.

--Willie G.Kulmbach. GermanyCanon G2 http://www.pbase.com/effzee

 

[Andrew Mitchell]

You guys know so much more than I do! I think I've been posting in the wrong forums for the last few months.

Thanks very much for the input. I'll be trying all your ideas in the next few days--Andrew (in Taiwan)C-21OOUZ photos at http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

 

[MagicAngel]

Ok, here is my shot at it. I added a little red to counter act the cyan cast in the faces and then I added a layer of Soft Light Blending using white spray to lighten the faces.

How did I do?

You guys know so much more than I do! I think I've been posting in
the wrong forums for the last few months.

Thanks very much for the input. I'll be trying all your ideas in
the next few days
--
Andrew (in Taiwan)
C-21OOUZ photos at
http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

 

[Willie G.]

Well, I think it looks pretty good but you lost some detail in the faces. Open my version and yours in separate windows and click back and forth between the two, you'll see where we both muffed it up. I blew out the highlights (look at the blackboard) and you kind of flattened the midtones on the kids... The answer lies somewhere in the middle...

I have to confess I was hammered with "real" work (blah...) today and didn't give the photo the time it deserves...

And now I'm chillin with some crummy dry white wine my wife got from a customer at work, and STILL I'm in front of a computer

Willie

How did I do?

You guys know so much more than I do! I think I've been posting in
the wrong forums for the last few months.

Thanks very much for the input. I'll be trying all your ideas in
the next few days
--
Andrew (in Taiwan)
C-21OOUZ photos at
http://www.pbase.com/andrew_aes/galleries

--Willie G.Kulmbach. GermanyCanon G2 http://www.pbase.com/effzee

 

[MagicAngel]

Well, I think it looks pretty good but you lost some detail in the
faces. Open my version and yours in separate windows and click back
and forth between the two, you'll see where we both muffed it up. I
blew out the highlights (look at the blackboard) and you kind of
flattened the midtones on the kids... The answer lies somewhere in
the middle...

I have to agree. The lost highlights in yours bothered me and told me that the answer wasn't a global change, something local, but it had to be something simple.

How about this, I gave the adjustment layer a 65% opacity...