Color Matching Rebecca Romijn - Help Please

[suztv]

I think that you are probably voicing what a lot of Photographers and Graphic Artist have grappled with for the past 10 years.

In my experience there is no easy way to just correct color. I know that professional photographers pay highly skilled individuals to color correct photos and that process takes a very long time. I have worked on jobs where the colors from two photos were drastically different but I have to composite them together.

Overall -

If your images need a pinkish or yellowish tone, create a hue/saturation layer. This layer will have to be adjusted according to each image but it is the best way to go.

Befor implementing that adjustment layer - make sure that the levels and colors have been tweaked. That way you know that you are starting with the best possible color to begin with. Sometimes if the photos were taken by the same camera or photographer you can set up and save a level (and or color) adjustment that you can apply to each photo.

If you have a really bad photo - see if you can get the negative or original photo and have it scanned in professionally (i.e. drum scan) The difference in color will be amazing - trust me.

Also adjusting curves, color and levels for each channel can sometimes help with oversaturation or undersaturation of a color.

Like I said there is no EASY fix - but as you work with it, it does become easier. There are a few plug-ins that do some fixes for color (Color NIK pro).

As far as adjusting the color of an object that has the same cast as the surrounding objects - well, copy via layer - create a layer mask and adjust that image accordingly while leaving the background separate. That is how most of the pros do it.

That is all I can suggest. I hope that on some level it helps...


:)

[spmonahan]

I think suztv pointed it out well: color correction is quite time consuming. However, you may have noticed that color in photographs is also highly dependent on how the photo was shot. In most cases no one notices these variations unless the two photos are placed side by side (which is the issue it seems you are running into).

My recommendation would be to try and match the photos as close as you can using whatever technique seems best to you. Then take the pictures and show them to someone whose opinion you respect and ask him what he thinks (in my experience it's best to ask without saying "these are color corrected - what do you think?"). Usually things that glaringly stand out to me are barely, if at all, noticeable to others.

My point is you are very aware of all the minute changes because you've seen the originals and know all the differences, but someone without that knowledge is much more likely to accept your altered work and even like it alot, though it may not be absolutely perfect.

Anyhow, just my two cents. Best of luck on your project.

[Jack Youngblood]

It helps to be very methodical when dealing with kinda thing. Looking at the images you can see that there are two main problems: One is that one photo is much 'greener' than the other (simple to put right) the other is that rebeccab8rq.jpg has been lit mostly with a flash (ie front-on lighting) whilst rebeccaa0lz.jpg has been lit from the side.

We will deal with the colour issue first by changing the values on rebeccaa0lz.jpg

To see the difference try this: have both images open side by side. Cycle through the RG and B channels one by one (go to channels pallet to do this. click by turn on each channel). Each channel will be presented as a grey scale image. You can see that the red channel on rebeccaa0lz.jpg is a lot darker.

If you wish to get exact numeric feedback on this then you can use the color sampler tool (underneath the eyedropper tool) and set it to grab a 5 by 5 pixel average. Take at least three samples from both images from a two areas you wish to be the same. Write down these values and average them out for each image. Treat one set as the source and the other as the target. You then have to feed these values into a curves adjustment layer.

HOWEVER.... if you are unsure as to what you are doing then it is much easier to do it by eye and still achieve really good results.

Top Tip: ignore all colour adjustment options except Curves, Levels and Hue/Satuartion.

In this case use curves. Open it up (as an adjustment layer) and make sure from the drop down menu that you are ONLY changing the Red channel. Grab the red curve somewhere in the middle and move it up.

Where on the curve you grab it is a visual representation of how dark or light the values are that you are changing. If you want visual feedback then drag the curser over the image and see it's corresponding point present itself on the curve

After fiddling with this you should have matched the colours.


Now the issue of adding the shadows on rebeccab8rq.jpg.

This is a different issue because we will be ADDING value not CHANGING them. Look at rebeccaa0lz.jpg. You can see that the edges on some parts of the figure are lost in the dark whereas in the other one the edges are all sharp. You will need to loose this sharpness. Place an empty layer on top of your image (rebeccab8rq.jpg). Set it's blend mode to multiply.

Now make a small, fluffy brush and set it's flow rate to 1 or 2. Grab a colour somewhere from her body where it is quite dark (it doesn't matter too much exactly what colour, play around until you get what you want). Now paint the new shadows in. This will take ages and depend upon how well you can draw. You will probably have to make a mask to make sure you are only painting her edges not the background. Painting is better done with a graphics tablet not a mouse.

Finally on a new layer (and using the same Multiply technique) paint in a side shadow. This is the fun bit and will instantly change the look and feel of the image.

Luck

[PhilipFong]

I use to do color correction like this a few years ago and here is my simple solution:

The first thing I'd do is using the color balance filter (ctrl-B)

-Adjust the mid tone to some what close to the designated result but not over do, because you can only acheive the best possible result adjsuting all three which is high light and shadow.

-After mid tone, do the shadows and then the high light, this is because the high light adjustments tends to distroy the details so, it mut be the last and use sparingly.

All you need to do is to determine the tonal value of three shades, the brightest, darkest and middle tone.

After which you can use replace color under image/ adjustment to fine tune specific color, I hope you don't mind I did some retouching on your pictures and here it is:
http://www.3darchive.info/new_page_1.htm

hope it helps.

[Finster]

Some interesting approaches here, I'll have to give them a shot. We do most of our color correction here with CMYK curves (print packaging). We can handle a lot of it with 5x5 samples and adjusting the neccessary points on the curve to get them to line up. In general we are working with high quality images to begin with, so there is plenty of data to work with.
Occassionally, we get low quality jpgs, or images that someone else has "corrected" and there's not a whole lot to work with. If the image already has the highlights and shadow detail blown out, you shoot for an overall color match, but you'll never get a visual match.

[grodot]

Yesterday after I upped this thread, I dropped everything and went out for dinner and a movie just to get my mind off the project. What started on Friday evening as what I thought was conscientious prep work for Monday ended up with me being driven close to insanity the entire weekend. I cancelled a date, missed soccer practice and when my poor girlfriend came over on Sunday, she had to resign to spending the entire afternoon watching tv in the living room — alone. It was ridiculous.

All that time I just couldn’t comprehend why this thing for no apparent reason had so much fight in it.

I didn’t really eat, nor sleep, my throat felt dry and there was this false sensation of love in my stomach — classic panic attack. The stress build-up got to me psychologically because I think for the first time I really had to confront a visual technical problem and not a creative abstractive one.

Today I checked this thread and felt hope slowly returning, because:


suztv:
The first wave of relief flowed through when you said color correction is serious work for specialised pros and that there’s no easy fix. It’s silly but at some point during the weekend bare-knuckle streetfight with Photoshop, I did thought the stiffness of the challenge felt more like a job for jewellers.

A few photos, particularly the baby ones (circa mid-1970s) definitely qualifies for drum scanning. I’ll drop by the pro-shop for a price quote.

The nik Color Efex Pro 2.0 that you recommended looks promising, although the USD299.95 price (complete edition, there’s also cheaper select and standard versions) requires me to max out the demo first before commiting.

In case anyone’s wondering, the site’s here (http://www.nikmultimedia.com/index/en/entry.php).

Are there other plug-ins that I can compare with? I know Kodak has the Digital SHO, ROC and GEM line at their Austin Development Center. The Airbrush and Noise Reduction filters works well because I’ve used them before.

They’re found here (http://www.asf.com/).

I’ll try these out tonight.

And I’ll try the separated background/subject approach tonight too. Thanks much.


spmonahan:
I suppose I agree that most of the time clients and audiences don’t really notice minutiea only the creators do, and what you said is comforting.

But I’ll be twice as valuable in the market or at the very least, half as knowledgeable as you and suztv if I can read and tweak color profiles at will, without melting down. It’s downright embarrassing.


Jack Youngblood:
FACT: Only people with trophies literally under their names will use “METHODICAL” when starting their sentences.

Nearly fell off the chair laughing.

Your post brought me back, confidence-wise. I’ve read about the 5x5 pixel average in a book somewhere and I’ll try to look for it.

And keep the adjustment layers to just the three. Got it.

If there is anything else to add Jack, it would really help because I’m feeling that this approach is the one, especially when I can extract and input numerical values to color graphs.

More empirical, less circumstantial. Artistry of course, keeps things in perspective.

I’ll get right to it then.


PhillipFong:
Happy Merdeka Day. Your example is awesome. I did exactly as you explained and got the same result. But when I try to bring the saturated Rebecca B down to the less saturated, greener Rebecca A, it’s proving a bit trickier.

The reason why Rebecca A’s profile is important and not so much Rebecca B’s more “correct” colors is because the bride and groom’s childhood segment of the book needs to look more vintage.

It’s shown in the example below. Again I’m using the same Rebecca Romijn pics to simplify things.

http://img396.imageshack.us/img396/3647/rebeccavintage8od.th.jpg (http://img396.imageshack.us/img396/3647/rebeccavintage8od.jpg)
Rebecca Vintage is for their childhood and maybe their parents during that period. Although they were children in the late seventies, I’m aiming for the more retro fifties and early sixties ad illustration look. I mean, who in the world wants to be captured for posterity in garish purples and pure greens and general leotardic smarminess? Okay, maybe Ron Jeremy. But other than him?

http://img365.imageshack.us/img365/7374/rebeccadreamy9qm.th.jpg (http://img365.imageshack.us/img365/7374/rebeccadreamy9qm.jpg)
Rebecca Dreamy is the treatment I’m planning for the later years when the lovebirds are adults and together. But the dark background wouldn’t be appropriate for a wedding lovey-dovey-pastelly-door-gift book so I’ll probably have to try to make it work against a lighter background. I’m just after the juicier saturation to reflect the now.


Finster:
Does your approach mirror Jack Youngblood’s technique? I’d be most grateful if you could share the finer differences if there are any.

When you say the CMYK curves would line up, it’s figuratively right?


Finally I’d like to thank everyone for sharing your valuable time and knowledge and I’ll update this page as soon as I get the techniques down say, in a week’s time.


Probably also a mini-tut for others to use.

[PhilipFong]

no problem, there are too many variations you can do, once you are familiar with those filters or curves, need not use all the functions just those that you are more comfortable with becouse some like the technical approach like curves, others do it visually, eye judgement.

There are things that CMYK can do that RGB cannot, particularly in the channels; printing purpose, CMYK is like mixing color like art material while RGB would be tweaking with lights.

Or you can do color matching in CMYK then saturate in RGB, that is what I used to do, good luck.
Your Merdeka day 15th July?

philip

[Foshizzle]

looks like curves, saturation and contrast could solve this for the most part. The dresses can get really close but the skin tones are pretty hard, i think b/c different flashes.

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