Just for Beginners, post your questions, ask for help, get opinions...
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THANK YOU GUYS.
Mitchel, you gave us a cathedra on color cast correction in a pill :D WAO, you are a truly gifted with the ability to explain things so well. Thank you for your help and ilustration.

As you can see I'm not a color man (B+W is my domain) this is one area I will have to dedicate a lot of time to learn properly or buy some heavy duty actions. In the old days I sent all color work to a commercial lab for the same reason skin tone balance. Once again thank you all. :thumbsup:
Shalom,
Don
A well conseived image is a poem written with light.
PSE6 - Lightroom - CS3 - Win-Vista -Epson 7800
Nikon D80 - D-700 - Canon G9
http://www.condeimaging.com
Don Diego, interesting comment about sending your color work to a commercial lab.

Last year I was at a gallery and talking to the featured photographer. She really had some good stuff. Big, big canvasses. Beautiful. 4-figure prices.

I asked something about 'printing' and she quickly said, "Oh, I don't try to process. I've found a wonderful lab to do all that for me." She did go on to tell me that she did quite a bit of Photoshop Work before sending the digital file to the lab but she gave them 95% of the credit for the finished product.

Rusty
There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness" - Dave Barry

If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough. - Robert Capa

www.prestophoto.com/photos/gallery/19932
Rusty, I used to sent my color work to a commercial lab during the film days but not any more since digital printing got so gooood. The only thing is that I always have problems with getting good skin tones specially when color cast is in the way other wise I have no problems. I do all my printing in house both color and black and white from a 4x6 to a 24 x36. I now desided that I HAVE to master skin tones so I'm going to dedicate a lot of study and printing time to it.

The best way to learn is to send a few files with different skin tones to a GOOD lab let them print you an 8x10 of ea. on the paper you use for portraits. You then use those samples as a guide to match your own. Cost some dinero to get educated but ignorance cost a lot more :rotfl:
Shalom,
Don
A well conseived image is a poem written with light.
PSE6 - Lightroom - CS3 - Win-Vista -Epson 7800
Nikon D80 - D-700 - Canon G9
http://www.condeimaging.com
Don,

Have you tried a gray card?
John
John, curious minds want to know...

I remember full well from my film days what a gray card is.

Have we been seduced by digital? Everything I seem to hear about the advantages of shooting RAW is that little matters other than exposure. Just get the proper exposure (f-stop vis-a-vis shutter) within a stop of optimum and you can fix just about anything in post-processing.

I shoot everything in RAW, ignore the WB setting (leave it on Auto), select a speed to do something with movement if that is my concern, or an aperture to control DOF if that is my interest. Are you suggesting that I should introduce gray cards into the mix? Aaaaarg

Rusty
There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness" - Dave Barry

If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough. - Robert Capa

www.prestophoto.com/photos/gallery/19932
John and Rusty, I may be wrong but to me the gray card worked fine with film and even then only provide you with a "closed to accurate" exposure. Now on digital I use a card I got from one of kelby's books that have white for hilights, black for shadows, Lt grey for camera raw white balance and a darker grey for mid tones. Now this midtones darker grey IS NOT the same shade as the 18% reflectance old time grey card from Kodak.

On the film days I always over exposed color film by 1/2 to 1 f stop to get more color saturation. On slides film I under exposed by the same amount. For B+W I used a spot meter and applied the Zone System that always gave me a 95 to 99% good exposure and the balance I fixed on the darkroom with Ilford graded papers and manipulation.

The problem I have with skin tones is something I'am going to solve pretty soon for I will work 24 hrs a day to get it under control. Now part of that will be learning to solve over cast images.

One thing to my knowledge no body has stop to think is that digital is much more complex than the darkroom enlarger with only 3 filters to mix. On digital you have a bunch of different variants that come into play like:
1- Your sensor sensitivity to one color or another
2- your monitor
3- your color space RGB1998/ Adobe Photo Pro and the other one for the internet.
4-your video card
5- your monitor calibration software
6-your printer
7-your paper
And the list goes on.
So in short when it comes to digital there are a million ways to solve a problem but the important thing is to master what you know and that is my quest my friends.
Shalom,
Don
A well conseived image is a poem written with light.
PSE6 - Lightroom - CS3 - Win-Vista -Epson 7800
Nikon D80 - D-700 - Canon G9
http://www.condeimaging.com
Rusty,

Take a deep breath – AHHHHHHHH . . .

Now, yes I do believe that RAW is the BESTer solution, but there are two issues – White Balance and Colour Cast.

If I were doing a big money shot or one I wanted to get absolutely right, I would go to the site with a piece of white paper and a gray card. I would shoot the white sheet of paper according to my Canon White Balance Manual settings (after reading the manual) and I would do the camera setting that tells the camera how to read that shot to set the white balance.

Next, I would take a shot of the scene with the gray card or better yet, one that had black, white and 18% gray – like Kelby includes with a lot of his manuals.

Then I would use Levels and an adjustment layer and the eye droppers to set the black, white and gray points on the test gray card shot and see what it looked like.

Then, if it looked right, I would drag that adjustment layer to all the other shots to correct them, and seehow it looked as a starter point for colour balance.

Now, truth be told, I hardly ever wind up with shots where I think I need this – usually the colour balance looks right, or I can tweak it and it looks right to me.

BUT . . . .

In August 2008, my daughter got married and in September 2007, I took the engagement shots. I took the ones she wanted, then took the ones I wanted and processed them and printed some 8x10’s. Mine were better posed shots but, my daughter wasn’t happy with the colours – too green! I tried everything, but couldn’t get the money shots right for the only person who counted.

I was – you know!

That night I had an inspiration. I went back to the same place at the same time the next day, and under pretty close to the same lighting conditions and took a shot with the gray card from Kelby. Used it to create a Levels adjustment layer and dragged it to the money shots – SAVED MY BACON!

So, it if it works, you don’t need it.

If it doesn’t, you will wish you had!

And that was the only time I was glad I had it – even if it was a day late!
John
Don,

Agree with all that, without reservation.

In 1967, I was working at my first job in an Eaton's camera department in Vancouver, Canada. I got invited to one of the local film processing places and had a fascinating tour of the plane, especially the colour processing labs.

One thing the plant manager said that stuck with me, was along the lines of - with the advent of colour TV broadcasting, he didn't want to be in the business in 10 years because everyone would be complaining and telling him and his lab how to process colour prints.

He was a little optimistic, but has been proven right in spades - in my opinion!

At least with what we have today, you can print today, and print next month and get the same colours - assuming you haven't messed with the Inks, Paper, Printer settings, Hue, Saturation, Contrast, Brightness, :rotfl: :rotfl: . . . . .etc.
John
John, the very first thing I try is this:
Next, I would take a shot of the scene with the gray card or better yet, one that had black, white and 18% gray – like Kelby includes with a lot of his manuals.

The problem is that it don't work all the time. I try that in the pictures I submited above and it made them worst. I'm now doing reseach on the subject in all my books and on the Internet to come up with a faily desent solution that I can include in my work flow. When I find it you guys will be the first one to know.
Shalom,
Don
A well conseived image is a poem written with light.
PSE6 - Lightroom - CS3 - Win-Vista -Epson 7800
Nikon D80 - D-700 - Canon G9
http://www.condeimaging.com
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