Thread: Color Tips
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Old 01-03-2009, 01:40 PM
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RoyL RoyL is offline
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Under normal circumstances, as long as you have exposed correctly, Photoshp and Camera Raw will deal with most color issues for you.

White Balance normally can be left on Daylight because even on a flat cloudy day you can warm the image in either software. Never leave it set to Auto because you have no idea what you are working with.

The fact that you shoot Raw is great as all color information is retained, even if you do shoot Black & White. I have a Fuji S9600 which I use for Sunsets and video, and I had an assignment to shoot in B&W. I left the image format set on Raw and when I was shooting I had a fair idea on what the B&W image would look like but much to my surprise, when I took the images into Camera Raw they were color.

Take a shot into Camera Raw and click on White Balance, I always start with As Shot then I use the down arrow to go through the list checking the result. You will not, or may not be able to do this, but try it anyway. If you feal that you cannot differentiate then select Auto (which tends to leave the image cold) or Daylight (which leaves the image warm). Now click on Auto for exposure, contrast, etc. If you have to sharpen or do anything else then do so, save image and load it up in Photoshop.

Once in photoshop I always try Image>Adjustments>Curves and hit Auto while watching image for results, sometimes it will not make any difference but most times it will. Look at the Histogram and the color channels, if any color appears to have been moved a lot at the top right of the channel/s then some color adjustment most probably will be required on the channel/s that has been shifted to the left back towards the right.

Finally Image>Adjustments>Auto Color will often help fix some color issues.

There are also some pretty good Plugins for color management, PhotoKit Color by Pixel Genius is one, which can help. There is also one called CurveMiester (I think it is spelt that way) which has some enhancements over the Photoshop Curves.

Paintshop Pro, Picasa, and other cheap or free packages also have tools that try to get the best tonal and color adjustments for you.

And finally, if you do an image conversion and you are not sure, post it for critique.
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