Need Opinions on Color Correcting a Set Of Images

[ElCapitan]

I have just recently started photographing indoor sports for high school. I've mainly focused on outdoor landscapes and wildlife and haven't had much of a problem on color correcting. Seeing as the main subject are the players, I'd right to get the right color balance so they don't look like casper or that they have jaundice.

The lights in the gym are interesting in that 1 out of every 4-5 shots has a very different color balance. My goal is to find the best color balance for the majority of shots, and then make the odd images resemble those. I used a grey card before my last shoot, but I don't think it was it was the best grey card to use.

I've messed around with the WB in LR. The first image is set to the white on the blue and white uniforms. The second is set to custom. The third is my own minor adjustments from the custom wb I used.

It would be great if anyone could let me know know which image they think has the best color balance and what it needs. I am still trying to get the best color balance in LR RAW, so I can use Temp, Tint, and HSL.

[deadgirlreading]

On my monitor, the middle one is too cool. I like the bottom one the best, although his face still has a reflected color cast from the mat.
I wish I could be more helpful but I don't know anything about lightroom. Good luck.

[OsmosisStudios]

THe first is closest, but is a notch too green. Other than that, fairly close.

[ElCapitan]

I don't think this needs its own thread, but as I am experimenting with custom white balancing and picking the kelvin in camera.

I was messing around today, and set the kelvin in camera to 5200, yet when I open the RAW file in either LR or Adobe Camera Raw, it shows the Temperature at 4850 and a -5 Tint. Trying to research the reason behind this. It would make it much easier shooting in this gym if I could figure out the exact temperature in LR and then set the kelvin to that in camera.

[BCampbell]

RAW files don't apply any of the camera settings to the image. The color temperature, sharpness, contrast, etc settings will only be applied to the JPG preview or additional JPG file if you're shooting RAW+JPG.

If you want to apply a color temperature across the board you'll need to figure out batch editing in your converter.

[ravncat]

You could try the threshold curves trick and see what result that gets you. The short of it is to open up curves adjust white point and turn on clipping preview, adjust white point slider slightly left till you can see some clipping, then use the white point selector and select the just barely clipped spot, then repeat with black and blackpoint slider.

More often than not this will do a good job of neutralizing color casts. I'm sure googling threshold curves and color should get you more details.

[jml79]

Ickk. Overhead fluorescent or sodium lighting and a great big huge blue surface to reflect blue light up... I would start by playing with gels on a fill flash. Try a blue, green and bare to start and see if that can even out the colour a little. You are also fighting the lights colour cycle. That is why every couple of pictures is way off. A flash will help with that as well. The only other way to fight the colour cycle is to shoot at 1/60 all the time but I am guessing that that is not an option due to the action here. You will still get some odd backgrounds with a flash but they might not be that noticeable and the flash should illuminate the foreground a little more evenly.

Your EXIF is removed on these and your Flickr so I can't see what your shooting at or if you used flash etc.

[stevenrecords]

I would work with #3 then bump up the colors in LAB mode in Photoshop. Then add a little more yellows and reds to your mid tones with a color balance