RED Frustration

[mydigitaleye]

the last couple of shoots i've had, have resulted in very red images.

Both the LCD and RAW's are very very red.

I spent nearly 4 hours on a paid shoot today taking pictures of costumes, and i've come home and checked the files, everything is overly red and overly saturated.

I might cry myself to sleep as a result.

what i find, is when i import photos into Lightroom, they look fine, until they have rendered, then they look like crap.

But it's not just LR, PS also does it, as does Windows Preview gallery thing.
why?

I know i can fix these, but i need to present proofs, and i'm going to have to pray the client isnt as technically minded or slightly colour blind and doesnt mind.

i've attached an example, although when exporting for web, the oversaturated image became less saturated than what i see here.

[t blanchard]

Could it be your white balance? Or did you add a red filter by accident in one of the menus?

What kind of camera are you using? I would recommend restoring your camera to all of its default settings, and then trying some test shots at home.

[mydigitaleye]

sorry, some technical details would have been useful.

I'm using a canon 40D, i had it set to auto white balance because i was shooting raw. white balance shift is all central/0, picture style is now set to Neutral as i thought that may help as it was set to standard previously.

[Mr Guy]

The example you attached doesn't look like it has a strong red shift to me, but it does look super over saturated. Any chance you could zip up one of the raw files and attach it?

[Murtasma]

Make sure you are doing all your edits in the rgb colorspace and not adobe rgb.

[vsa]

Maybe useless comment here but.....
If you can fix them in Lightroom then can't hurt to try copying the settings of the edited one and applying it to others?
(if they're all similarly messed up)

[t blanchard]

In the future I would recommend doing one of those preset WB, or do a custom white balance since you are in a controlled light situation. That would cut down on your WB corrections later - even if you are shooting RAW I try to get as much correct in camera.

Have you tried a WB or color temp correction in DPP? The white balance clicker is actually pretty good at correcting WB.

[kirbinster]

Do you have the saturation turned way up in your camera by mistake? I brought the tiny copy you have here into lightroom and adjusted the whitebalance and decreased the saturation real quick and it looks better - but the quality is bad in this small size.

[oldwolf]

not sure if this is correct or not but isn't there an option to convert it cmyk or cmky or something like that? are you accidentally converting to that instead of rgb?

[mydigitaleye]

Originally Posted by Mr Guy

The example you attached doesn't look like it has a strong red shift to me, but it does look super over saturated. Any chance you could zip up one of the raw files and attach it?

I woke up late and need to run back to the shoot, so i'll attach some raw's later, from the last 3 shoots so you can see the red shift. it could simply be something with my monitor.

I did calibrate it, but found everything looked very green, even the windows start/task bar. So it's on default now.

Make sure you are doing all your edits in the rgb colorspace and not adobe rgb.

I'm not sure where to set this in LR, when i edit in PS from LR it auto converts it to ProPhoto RGB.

Maybe useless comment here but.....
If you can fix them in Lightroom then can't hurt to try copying the settings of the edited one and applying it to others?
(if they're all similarly messed up)

i will. even though there were maybe 300 pictures taken, there were only maybe 12 costumes, so once they pick wha they want the editing wont take too long. So if i can get the settings right in LR, then as you said, it would be easier to apply to the rest.

In the future I would recommend doing one of those preset WB, or do a custom white balance since you are in a controlled light situation. That would cut down on your WB corrections later - even if you are shooting RAW I try to get as much correct in camera.

Have you tried a WB or color temp correction in DPP? The white balance clicker is actually pretty good at correcting WB.

i'll do a custom white balance today and hope that sorts part of the problem out.
I've also found that the images on the LCD look really bad. Colours are 'smudged', and look like really compressed low res jpegs, with lots of red!

You'll have to tell me what DPP is. Someone mentioned it once before and i still have no idea. I import through the canon software provided, then import into LR, and edit between LR & PS.

I downloaded picasa? and noticed when i imported a raw into there, it was less saturated than in adobe software.

I'll have to do a screen shot later.

Do you have the saturation turned way up in your camera by mistake? I brought the tiny copy you have here into lightroom and adjusted the whitebalance and decreased the saturation real quick and it looks better - but the quality is bad in this small size.

I hope not. Honestly, i dont play with camera picture settings, i just shoot raw and edit what's needed later. But i reset the camera settings last night and will see if that makes a difference. It never used to do this, only recently.

not sure if this is correct or not but isn't there an option to convert it cmyk or cmky or something like that? are you accidentally converting to that instead of rgb?

cmyk conversion is a manual process in PS.

right - i need to run, but i'll post some raws later.

thanks for the help and advice