Any good way of removing this color cast?

GP · June 21, 2009, 10:25:35 PM

I'm working on this wedding photo. As you can see there is a color cast/ stain very visible on the groom's white suit. I have tried to select the areas and applied different adjustment layers to it (like Hue/Saturation, Levels, Channel mixer, Brightness & Contrast) but no luck. I also tried the color replacement tool and dodging. :(
What else can I do? You have any tricks up your sleeve?

Mhayes · June 22, 2009, 03:57:34 AM

GP, Please tell me there is more to this photo than we are seeing. I played around with it and what I came up with may not be the best cure to the problem. Had the whole photo had a color cast would have been easier than the splotches of color. I ended up doing: Image Duplicate so that I could have a copy to work on the best channel. Of the three channels, I decided that the green was the best. Back in RGB mode I went to Image>Calculations and choose the green channel for both Source 1 and 2. I then changed the mode to Screen and lowered the opacity to about 85%--play around with that so it doesn't look too bright. Once that is done do a Ctrl All and then a copy. Take the copy and paste into your original photo and do a layer mask to bring back the other colors. You will have to work on the splotches, but now you no longer have the color cast (perhaps a headache in its place).

Good Luck!

Margie

kiska · June 22, 2009, 07:35:31 AM

Or:

Get colors right with levels, etc.

New layer- set to color blend

Sample good color and paint over discoloration

New layer- normal, soft brush to build up density on discolored areas

New layer-healing brush to blend spots with good textured areas

Ausimax · June 22, 2009, 08:57:24 AM

After colour correcting I usually open a new layer and use a soft clone tool at about 60% opacity, select a good patch as a reference and use that to paint over the damage, where you have shading, like folds etc I drop the opacity back to about 30%, that preserves the shading for later enhancement.

If the material has a noticeable texture the cloning will loose it, so then use the healing tool indexed to a good textured spot and work over the cloned areas to restore texture.

Then on a separate layer paint in the shading, blur it and then lower the opacity il it looks OK.

Max

Hannie · June 22, 2009, 10:47:52 AM

Sometimes, if the discoloration area is not too big and the color cast is not too bad I cheat a little and use the healing brush to make the edges of the cast less visible. I sample from the lighter area.

Of course this doesn't make the color cast disappear like the above methods will! It only makes the blotches pop out less.

Good luck,

Hannie

GP · June 22, 2009, 02:55:43 PM

You guys are great! So many things to try! :up:

Margie, the man has actually a head and there is also a guy attached to the sleeve in the upper right corner. And yes you are right, if the color cast would be over the whole photo, it would be a piece of cake.

But lets think about it for a moment.... That photo comes from HANNIE. ::)
Not only does she now pretend there is an "easy" fix to the problem. She actually conned me into thinking, that the man, who's silvery sleeve we see in the corner, is Salvador Dali! >:(
I had some doubt about this right a way, because his mustache doe's not have the characteristic handlebars. :mad:

Thanks a ton for the tips! :wnw:

lurch · June 22, 2009, 05:49:11 PM

Gerlinde, this is a perfect situation for doing cleanup on a luminosity layer. Here's what I did, quick and dirty, as an illustration. First made a duplicate layer, desaturated it, and set the blending mode to luminosity. Then, on that layer, cloned away (just some of) the unevenness in tone that comes from the color spots. Next made a blank layer and set its mode to color. On the color layer, I painted over the stains using a brush set to color mode and colors sampled from a nearby good spot.

This is the partially cleaned-up luminosity layer:

These are the layers:

And here's the result from painting over part of the color layer (left some unpainted so you could see the difference):

This trick works for all sorts of colored stains and splotches. Sometimes I do most of a restoration this way, if I can put together a good gray-scale for a luminosity layer, because for me it's easier to clean up tone and color separately.

GP · June 22, 2009, 10:17:45 PM

Great tut! Thank you Lurch I will give this a try too. It's amazing how many different ways there are to do the same thing.

Gerlinde

GP · June 25, 2009, 04:11:27 AM

Hi all, I'm back with the rest of the picture.
But first of, I would like to thank Lurch again for her tutorial. It worked just great and I wonder how you came up with that. I can only highly recommend to try it out some time.
Everybody else, don't be sad, you suggestions were great too, but Lurch's worked better for the situation.
So here it is, please pick away..... ;D

Hannie · June 25, 2009, 04:22:40 AM

Beeeooootiful Gerlinde!
And I'm not upset at all that you didn't use my cheating method for the splotches... :'(

(I still say it is Salvador Dali on the right)

:up:

Hannie

Mhayes · June 25, 2009, 01:41:44 PM

Wow, this looks great! This was a really fun thread to see all the different ways to treat the problem.

Margie

lurch · June 25, 2009, 03:10:37 PM

It's lovely, Gerlinde! :up: Glad you were able to use the luminosity trick.

GP · June 25, 2009, 03:11:50 PM

Thanks Hannie and Margie!
I'm so excited about that tip from Lurch, because you clone away on the luminosity layer with out destroying the texture of the photo and at the same time you can paint on the color layer without getting the threaded paint look. You just switch between the layers depending on what you need to do.