white balance set wrong before and after

[evphoto]

This past fall I did a photo swap with another photographer from another state. We both needed some headshot type photos of ourselves for our businesses. Thought it would work out great...

problem is I drove 2 hrs to get there and didn't realize til I was getting out of my car that I forgot the camera!! oops

So she told me I could use hers... should have known my photos weren't going to turn out great when she handed me her camera and it was in auto... but thats not the reason for this post...her white balance while on auto set itself to auto obviosuly, and I am used to using my camera in manual and usually set my own white balance. I have no idea why it didn't click with me to check her white balance setting before shooting but I didn't.

Turns out the white balance was set for tungsten. All of the photos I took turned out blue...and I mean SMURF blue! next problem...she said she shot in raw...she shot in jpeg so no after fixing the wb.

here is a before and after of awful wb



and an after photoshop picture




first i did a color balance and took the blue/yellow slider way close to the yellow side
then i did a warming filter

that pretty much took care of the horrible blue cast on the skin.

I worked on the light on the skin and smoothed that out

I also did a photo filter on the grass only to "green" it up a bit more

a couple other small things were done but that was the bulk of it.


moral of the story...always remember your own camera...and if not at least remember to check raw and wb


-sidenote- while i realize this wasn't the greatest photo to begin with, this is the one she chose to use as her website photo...and she had edited it horribly (it was still very blue and had a very heavy vignette) so I took the time to do it so it would at least look half way decent!

[SusanH1970]

Not bad, still seeing a LOT of magenta and blue in the "after", though. It does show how much can be saved, however.

[Jim Poor]

I'm all for shooting RAW, but the mindset that things can't be changed in a JPG capture is a bit over the top. A high quality JPG can be manipulated very well. Yes, more can be done with RAW, but to say that a JPG can't be corrected for WB is just a bit snobbish.

Try this for a good start.

Open the image in PS
Duplicate the layer
Go Filter, Blur Average
Select the gray dropper
Click on the blurred layer (solid color, blue in this case)
Turn off visibility of the blurred layer
Adjust opacity of levels layer to taste

Play with it some more using other methods to polish it up.

[BK553]

Agreed Jim, you can do more in JPEG than most people think.

While the "after" photo is of course better, there are still some problems. There is still a blue/grey cast on the woman's face and the guys head, which look either still blue or extremely desaturated. The highlights also have a bluish tint too. And there's a weird line around the left side of her nose.

I know you didn't specifically ask for criticism, and you did a good job getting it back to where it is now, just thought it may help.

[evphoto]

Thanks for the replies. I realize that the after photo still isn't the greatest, to be honest I didn't spend much time on it I was just trying to get something done to get the other horrid photo offline. I would send a link to it but she has since deleted her photo site after I repeatedly asked her to remove the photo.

I will have to play with it some more tonight just to see what I can do. Will post it when I get the chance.

[zatyzakarie]

dear evphoto.

nice picture friend.
until now i still learn how to make a good adjustment of lighting.

[david547]

For the sake of continuing to rework an already compromised Jpeg., try some different B&W effects along with a small amount of colored filter. Just my perspective.

[CurlyCorry]

further moral of the story: LCD monitor is there for a reason.... review pics BEFORE we leave the scene!! LOL You would have noticed the tungsten light setting I think.... oh well.... ya did a great job on recovering the photo, in my opinion.

[happyme]

The picture was nice, blue makes it look weird as hell. Nice working on changing the tones, the after picture still has a bit of blue shade. You should shoot on RAW.

[nickbedford]

Another moral of the story: "photographer" shooting auto/jpeg?