Removing warm (yellow) tones on a white subject

With Georg/Gawan's permission, I am posting a "quick and dirty" method of removing the warm tones on the white plumage of the swan. What I did took about 5-10 minutes to complete. I will cover that in some detail below the image I posted.

Here is the original image from the DNG file I downloaded from Georg, simply converted to JPEG. Let there be no question: this is a good exposure for a bright white subject in order to preserve feather detail:


This is where the benefits of RAW format really shows up - see below.

First, I opened the DNG file in ACR and did the following:

1. Moved the Recovery slider to mid 60's to recover blown highlights.
2. Bumped up the exposure by 1/2 stop.
3. Increased Fill Light to 45.

At this point the image still has very warm tones:


Steps to reproduce the next image...

In Photoshop CS3 I did the following:
Images--> Adjustments--> Levels --> Options --> Auto Color Correct Options dialog window loads.

Select "Find Dark & Light Colors" then click on OK:



Back in Levels, you can sample with the dropper tool to ensure the white is correct. While in RGB (default) I brightened the whites and IIRC, moved the midpoint slightly higher (1.18??) in value to keep the whites "white" and remove the remainder of the noticeable warm tones on the white plumage:

You can also run a Shadow/Highlight with the following values as another option...

Shadows
Amount: 11%
Tonal Width: 53%

Highlights
Amount: 15%
Tonal Width 30%

Here is the final product... It is roughly cropped the same, but a little bigger to allow you to see the subtle differences on the plumage and it's detail:


Here is Georg's original corrected image for reference:

Originally Posted by gawan

I think I have done at least a hundred swan shots just this spring, some of them I am pleased with, here are a few...

The funny part is that it took me much longer to document my PP process and save all of the images at each stage and upload them, as opposed to doing the actual image corrections...

The above steps took perhaps several minutes to complete, but I am doing some of this intuitively. I am not a Photoshop guru, but I hope this will help someone out in the future. Thanks again to Georg to allow me to use this image for the tutorial!!!

Regards,
Marc

[gawan]

Great tutorial, I am more than happy to have my shot as the material for this session! Thanks Marc!

[Peter Zack]

Excellent tutorial Marc. The final result works very well. Easy to follow steps.

[Jimbo]

I will definately be giving this a try Marc. Thank you. JIM