Need Help With Color.

[RLucas]

This is one from a set I did Friday night with my stepdaughter and one of her friends, Celina, who is my Guinea pig for this image. I had gone to shooting primarily in black and white, just because I can never get my colors to look just right. The added bonus for my learning experience is that she has very dark hair and dark eyes, which I haven't encountered yet in my limited experience. I started my process in LR3 and did my basic adjustment with the clarity, contrast, and tweakage of the curves. I actually went backward with the contrast and tried to flatten it out just a tad. I then brought it in to GIMP, with a Screen Layer, and a Soft Light layer, both desaturated, and then the opacity reduced to about 20% on the Screen Layer, and the Soft Light layer reduced to about 50%. I added a layer mask to the soft light layer, and brush over her eyes to brighten them back up, Did a slight high pass and flattened. Brought it back in to LR, and made some minor adjustments on some skin imperfections.
My goal is to have a more vivid image, with punchier colors, but not to the point of being cartoonish looking. I still feel it is falling short, but i need more eyes on this please. What do you think? What would you do? Feel free to edit this if you wish. Can't wait to hear your thoughts, good or bad.
Thanks. Luke


Exposure 0.013 sec (1/80)
Aperture f/4.5
Focal Length 85 mm
ISO Speed 800

[autofocus]

Luke, are you shooting with a custom white balance? Her skin tones look OK to me, but I'm on my laptop, so I can never be sure. On my laptop, it looks like her left cheek area is a little hot, and there's lost detail in her hair. (but half of the problems get better or worse depending on the angle of my screen ) Can we see the mostly unedited version?

[RLucas]

Hey, yeah. Thanks Vinnie. I am using a gray card for a custom white balance. I will upload an unedited version shortly. Thanks.

[RLucas]

Here is the SOOC version, cropped.
The more I look at it, the more I think I am in "Overcook" mode again.
Thanks for the help!

[private]

I played with the "cooked" version just a bit - I recropped and flipped the image. I flipped b/c her necklace was backwards and it made me feel something was just a bit off. I also applied a slight warming filter and brightened up the shadows a bit. She is a cute girl. Wish I saw the SOOC one b4 I started playing

[autofocus]

did this on my laptop, so once again no guarantee how it'll look on a calibrated monitor. Played with levels a bit, did some adjustments in selective color, softened her up a bit, and got the following


Luke by vmontalbano, on Flickr

[RLucas]

Originally Posted by private

I played with the "cooked" version just a bit - I recropped and flipped the image. I flipped b/c her necklace was backwards and it made me feel something was just a bit off. I also applied a slight warming filter and brightened up the shadows a bit. She is a cute girl. Wish I saw the SOOC one b4 I started playing

Thank you Pat! It is amazing how much just flipping the image did for the composition! I am going to have to think about this more often!

Originally Posted by autofocus

did this on my laptop, so once again no guarantee how it'll look on a calibrated monitor. Played with levels a bit, did some adjustments in selective color, softened her up a bit, and got the following

Thanks Vince, this is more of what I was going for, but I think ultimately it was a poor color combination choice on my part for what I was trying to do. I thought maybe the green shirt would compliment the orange background, but I didn't take her skin tone in to account. She has more of an olive skin tone than the normal Caucasian tones that I am used to. This has been quite the learning experience for me!
Finally, I decided to sample the orange background, create a new layer, and bucket fill it with the background color. I set the layer mode to subtract, and added a layer mask. I brushed back over her, and the the shirt to get rid of the blue hue that was left, and adjusted the opacity of the subtract layer to taste. It left the background more of an ochre/sienna tone, that I thought complimented her skin tone better. I held way back on the sharpening this time to. What do you think now?
Thanks both of you for the help!

[carlyfan]

I could be wrong, but it still looks over sharpened to me. Frankly I like the SOOC best. It looks more natural.

[autofocus]

Wow, just looked at my edit on my calibrated CRT and it's quite dark. I don't know how people can do edits on a laptop...especially those with adjustable luminance

[RLucas]

Originally Posted by carlyfan

I could be wrong, but it still looks over sharpened to me. Frankly I like the SOOC best. It looks more natural.

I agree. I think bringing it back in through LR resharpened it when I exported. I like the SOOC better myself after looking at it this morning. Just trying different things. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't.

Originally Posted by autofocus

Wow, just looked at my edit on my calibrated CRT and it's quite dark. I don't know how people can do edits on a laptop...especially those with adjustable luminance

It's not bad Vinnie. I use my laptop all the time. I just make sure my environment stays the same when I edit. I dialed in the luminance, and don't touch it anymore.

Thanks again for the help everyone! This was the worst picture of the bunch, and she hated it too. lol! I work with color every day mixing and tinting paint, but seem to have the worst time with images. I think it may have more to do with my pallete choice as well.