Fixing Colour

[Miffo]

Hi

I had my camera's white balance set for indoor (at a church) then forgot to change the white balance back to auto before taking an outdoor shot. I have been playing around with the colour saturation on Photoshop with this photo and it looks better now, but to me it's still quite not right.

I took another photo soon after of the same subject's with the white balance set to auto and the colours look right, but I prefer the photo with the white balance set incorrectly.

Is there a function in Photoshop where I can take a sample of the same colour item from another photo, use that sample on the same item of the photo I am trying to colour correct, so that all the colours would be adjusted accodingly on the same photo?

I hope this make sense.

Thanks in advance

Miffo

[Medley]

There really isn't a one-button cure for this. However, if you would care to post the original image (the one you want to change, before you made any adjustments), I'll be happy to have a look at it, fix it if possible, and let you know what I did.

-Medley.

[Miffo]

Thanks Medley. How do I post an image. I am only new to this.

Thanks Miffo[/quote]

[thehen]

Upload your image to an image hosting website like Photobucket or Imageshack:

http://www.photobucket.com/

http://www.imageshack.us/

Then just paste a link on the comment reply, select it by double clicking on it and click the IMG button at the top of the reply form. Good luck.

[Miffo]

I have uploaded 2 images to the following link...

http://s175.photobucket.com/albums/w158/dmiffo/

Image 1 is the image I would like to fix and image 2 shows the colours that I would like image 1 to match with.


Thanks and Regards

Miffo

[thehen]

I had a go, though it doesn't really match the other photo. There's something about the photo that I can't pinpoint that's making it difficult to get similar.

Original:



Retouched/Corrected:

[thehen]

Oh wait, I misread what you were asking. You deliberately want incorrect colour balance? Hmm.

I created a new layer and filled it with a blue I colour dropped from an average area of the original photo. I then set the blending mode to 'color' and reduced the opacity to about 50%

result:

[Medley]

I think you were right the first time, Hen. It almost got me too, but if you look at the images he posted, the first one is title 'Image 2" and the second one 'Image 1'.

Miffo, remember what I said about there not being a one-button cure? Well, I was wrong (hey, it happens...). If you go to Levels (or Curves) you will find three eyedroppers in the dialog box. The middle one sets the greypoint. Choose it and find something that you think should be grey in the photo. I chose the darker sidewalk area just to the right of the foot of the man on the right. Straightened things out right quick.

I also took the liberty to sharpen the image some. Not only did it make the faces less blurry, but it brought out the writing on the building in the background. Anyway, here's the image:



This image is lighter than the other one, so the colors won't be exactly the same, but I thought it looked better without darkening. Hope this helps.

-Medley.

[thehen]

Medley - On my monitor the sharpening of the image seems to have emphasised the jpeg compression considerably. Can you not do it using High Pass?

[Medley]

I can, but I don't. I use Lab mode to sharpen, so I don't get the occasional color shift associated with RGB. And since most filters are not available in Lab mode......

Actually, I didn't use a lot of sharpening as the image is only 464x701 pixels. Still, if Miffo wants an unsarpened image, I'll be happy to do it for him, or he can simply do his own greypoint adjustment, now that he knows how.

Also, although I tried not to do so in this case, I tend to sharpen images for printing. The conversion from square pixels to round halftone dots always causes a bit of softening, so a little oversharpening tends to be a good thing. Still, it's best done when you have the printer profile at hand. There are many variables, but the dpi setting of the printer is the biggest.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's entirely possible that my eye was a bit off in this case.

Just out of curiosity Hen, are you on a windows machine? I ask because I'm using Mac, and I know there are differences, just not the extent of those differences.

-Medley.