Color adjustment

[Hannie]

Have been trying for several days now to get the colors right in this photo.  I'm still not very happy with the final result, am I being too critical or is there still some color imbalance... (the photo still needs to be restored  :P)

Hannie

(After I uploaded to Photobacket I noticed a real difference in color: the uploaded adjusted JPEG is somewhat duller and more blue than the JPEG on my pc!)

[Charlene5]

Hi Hannie!

FWIW here's what I got after a color fiddling.  Most of my experience is in black and white so if I were you I wouldn't listen to me :) 

MJ

[Hannie]

Hi MJ,

Thanks for your reaction!  I have been doing a number of restorations of portraits made in the Olin Mills studios and I noticed that these are always hard to color correct.  Maybe I should just leave it, restore the photo and let the printer do the final color balancing.

Hannie

[hoodman3]

I've seen other posts where color is the issue. Some say don't do anything, the printer will make the adjustments. What exactly does the printer do? There's definitely conflicts between different monitors and the printer color space. Maybe we should adjust the color as best we can and let the printer make the adjustments for the final print? It's hard to say when to stop.
Pete

[Tess (Tassie D)]

I'd say you got it pretty spot on Hannie, I get the same result. I think the thing with the colour is we need to be at least close as it's too easy to not see something in a photo when its all a muddy brown colour.

[Ausimax]

Hannie when you are uploading your photos for viewing on the web do you change the profile to sRGB? That is supposed to be the correct colour space for the web, and I have found it makes the colours muddy and darker than RGB, I'm not sure what the effect is if you just use RGB.
By the way the owners info is still in the Exif data of this image.

Max

[glennab]

Hi Hannie

I figured I'd try to use some of the new techniques I'm learning in my CS2 tutorials, and this one actually worked out quite well.  Duplicate your layer and add an adjustment layer using threshold.  As you move the slider back and forth you can find the darkest and lightest areas of the photo and mark them by placing a little target directly over each (in CS2 use option and click on the lightest and darkest areas to get the targets).  Discard the adjustment layer.  Your markers will still show.  Use the white point and black point eyedroppers to set those values where you've marked the darkest and lightest area with threshold, and then find something neutral to set your gray point.

Here's what I ended up with.  I thought the photo needed to be a little cooler, and this method, I think, accomplished that.



Pete, as for the color correction, I think the adjustments the printer makes are to accommodate the color profile of their equipment.  Anything that looks "off," as in the yellowed areas in this image would be ours to take care of.  I suspect if there's an overall "cast" to the image, the printer would use their profile to get a balance.  Can anyone verify that?

Cheers!

Glenna

[rockthumper]

I used 'smart photo fix' and a curves adjustment and it gave me a fairly good result similar to MJ's. My workspace is sRGB and the colours aren't muddy (more like a sort of pastel wonderland but that's just the photo). There seem to be yellow stains on almost everything including the girl's faces - maybe that's throwing out your colour matching process Hannie?

Just saw Glenna's post and clearly I don't understand the process in PS.  ???

[Hannie]

Thank you all for your reaction!
Max, I don't change the color profile when I upload (I think?) but the Exif data says Color Mode: RGB and Color Profile: sRGB.  Thank you for reminding me about the owners info, corrected that!
Glenna I used Kiska's method:
http://www.oprworkshop.org/forum/index.php/topic,954.msg9275.html#msg9275
I think it is the same method that you used.  I thought the result was a little too cold and I adjusted it, probably too much because yours looks pretty good!
RT, you may be right about the yellow blotches interfering with the color balancing, will have to try that one as well!
Oh boy, this project is going to take me a long time, while it looked so easy at first!
Love learning all the new stuff though.

Hannie

[GP]

Hannie,
I'm coming into this a little bit late, but I like your original post best. You could tone down the contrast a tiny bit and lighten up the shadow on the little girls neck. I think the colors are right on.
Gerlinde

[Hannie]

Thanks Gerlinde,  I think I will do just that!

Hannie