Me & white don't like eachother....Help?? Please?

[FGPhotography]

This photo had some post processing & I still can't get the white, white! Any tips/help would be greatly appreciated

Thank you!

[starrylaurie]

My guess? Your white balance metered off of the sky, turning the white dress and jacket blue. I took a quick 5 minute shot at correcting, and was able to correct somewhat using a separate Layer and Levels, though I'm not 100% sure about the skintones. Here's my quick take - you don't say whether it's okay to help and repost your pic or not, so if you would rather I take it down, just let me know.

Hope it helps!

[Nicole]

I'm sure there are DIY ways to do it, but I have to say that if you can justify the cost (and if you would use more than one of the filters), the Nik Color Efex filters have one called "White Neutralizer" which will whiten up the whites really nicely. I was able to whiten up the dress in just a few seconds when I tried. Now, I'm not saying that there aren't other ways to do it, just that it is one option.

[FGPhotography]

I had the balance set to PRE with the ExpoDisc... Hmm...

Thank you for doing that, what exactly did you adjust - i tried to fiddle with the levels after layering and didn't succeed at all... :S

Originally Posted by starrylaurie

My guess? Your white balance metered off of the sky, turning the white dress and jacket blue. I took a quick 5 minute shot at correcting, and was able to correct somewhat using a separate Layer and Levels, though I'm not 100% sure about the skintones. Here's my quick take - you don't say whether it's okay to help and repost your pic or not, so if you would rather I take it down, just let me know.

Hope it helps!

[FGPhotography]

Originally Posted by Nicole

I'm sure there are DIY ways to do it, but I have to say that if you can justify the cost (and if you would use more than one of the filters), the Nik Color Efex filters have one called "White Neutralizer" which will whiten up the whites really nicely. I was able to whiten up the dress in just a few seconds when I tried. Now, I'm not saying that there aren't other ways to do it, just that it is one option.

Is that something for the camera, or a plug-in for something? Sorry, I am still learning with post processing.

Thank you.

[Nicole]

No worries. It's a plugin for Photoshop (both regular and Elements), Aperture, and Capture NX 2. Ummm, link for you Can't learn unless you ask after all

[starrylaurie]

Originally Posted by FGPhotography

I had the balance set to PRE with the ExpoDisc... Hmm...

Thank you for doing that, what exactly did you adjust - i tried to fiddle with the levels after layering and didn't succeed at all... :S

I use GIMP, so it may not be exactly the same as the program you use. However, after duplicating the original, I chose the Levels option and used the eye dropper. This sets the color you choose as the whitest white and adjusts the rest of the pic to that white balance. Since your sky was (I'm guessing) a little overcast, it completely blew the sky out. Hence the second layer. Using the top layer, I just erased the bride and groom, leaving the rest of the pic with the same colors as the original.

Does that make sense? I guess I should add - I like the erase tool in Gimp better than the masking tool, but I'm sure using any other program you may just want to mask the bride and groom.

Hope this helps!

[Nicole]

This was just a very quick adjustment. I used the split mode on the plugin to show the before (left) and after (right).



the only problem I was finding when using levels / curves to whiten the dress was that you wind up getting spots that are blown out without any detail. This one could still use a bit of adjustment to brighten it up a bit, but it takes a lot of the blue out of the dress.

Happy to take it down if it's a problem, it's just there for illustration purposes.

[kencaleno]

Expodisc is an expensive and unnecessary toy-better to set white balance to cloudy.Best way, if you have a hand-held meter,that can take incident light readings,take reading back towards camera from bride's dress,then use manual settings-Or get close to bride and take reading with your camera in AV mode,centre-weighted metering off of bride's dress. make note of settings-then transfer to camera in manual mode. NOTE:Light falling on all tones remains constant; whereas light reflected from different tones will give different readings. regards, Ken

[FGPhotography]

I've installed the trial version of the plug in and it's wonderful... that is, until it did funky things to my computer My screen kept going white to the point where i had to reboot So hopefully next time I use it I won't have any issues. Thank you for the link, though, it will help a lot with the white... I took over 1000 pictures and most of them turned out great, but there's a few where the blue just felt it was it's place to take over.. Thank you again! (I have no problems w/DPS users adjusting and re-posing my items in DPS, it helps. I should probably post that in my signature, eh?)

Originally Posted by Nicole

This was just a very quick adjustment. I used the split mode on the plugin to show the before (left) and after (right).



the only problem I was finding when using levels / curves to whiten the dress was that you wind up getting spots that are blown out without any detail. This one could still use a bit of adjustment to brighten it up a bit, but it takes a lot of the blue out of the dress.

Happy to take it down if it's a problem, it's just there for illustration purposes.