[KierraElizabeth]

Hi Pentaxians! I need a little help from your vast span of knowledge...
This is a photo sooc of my daughter. It seems no matter what I do, I can't get rid of that green on her legs. I am actually really bad at spotting color casts, but this one I can definitely see because it is so bad, but I'm not sure what to do about it.

Does anyone have any suggestions or resources I can study to learn how to help fix this?
Thank you!

[adpo]

what software are you planning on using to edit?

[KierraElizabeth]

what software are you planning on using to edit?

Hi, adpo. I will be using CS5.

[imtheguy]

Does anyone have any suggestions or resources I can study to learn how to help fix this?

Hello KierraElizabeth,
Your eyes must be far more sensitive than mine as overall the pic has a proper white balance, at least according to PE9 color cast checks on the white wood far enough from the ground to miss the grass reflections. It all looks pretty natural to me but if you want to change it I would probably try this 2 minute drill just because I am familiar with it:
- select the skin on both legs and desaturate just yellow or yellow and green until you get what you want, maybe then have to increase saturation of red if it goes gray on you. Of course you are either working a copy or a layer.

Looking just at the posted sample, the shade appears to be giving a bluish cast, not an unusual occurance but something to consider if you are trying to get the legs to look like the arms and face.

No doubt there are a dozen ways to edit the same thing and I dont know the best but still feel it looks natural. Of course you could always crop to change the composition and lose the areas you feel are tinted. Just my 2 cents.

[adpo]

open the image, create an adjustment layer, select curves. zoom in on the area where the color cast is. go to the thingy with the actual curve, click on the thing that says RGB, select green. this will affect the whole image, so just focus on where you want to edit. adjust the curve until the color cast is gone in that area only. now press control+i to invert the mask. select a paintbrush, pick white as your color and paint in the color cast area. Apply a weak gaussian blur to the layer to even out any rough transitions.

[adpo]

this also works for other colors as long as you remember the relationship between colors. the blue curve controls blue and yellow, the red curve does red and cyan, green does green and magenta. combine multiple adjustments for other colors such as orange (red/cyan + yellow/blue)

[JohnBee]

Hi Pentaxians! I need a little help from your vast span of knowledge...
This is a photo sooc of my daughter. It seems no matter what I do, I can't get rid of that green on her legs.

The likely problem here is that the green cast is accurate(true to life)
Anyways, if you're anything like me, and can't be bothered with 25 steps to correct the simplest of things, then I'd highly recommend a plugin such as: iCorrect Portrait for Photoshop. Which is nothing more than a small(but indispensable) color correction utility that allows for one click corrections on skin tones in pretty much any scenario.



could use a slight luminance adjustment(but you get the idea)

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Last edited by JohnBee; 07-13-2011 at 02:18 AM.

[wildman]

The likely problem here is that the green cast is accurate(true to life)

good references for color casting

It's not a color cast - a general over-all false tint due to incorrect color balance.

It's a local tinting coming off the grass.

In other words pic is just showing what was actually there when you took the shot and not a result of hardware or software failure.

Technically there is nothing wrong to correct.

[KierraElizabeth]

Thank you all for your advice!
It seems that my understanding of color casting is faulty from the beginning then? To clarify--color casting is something that occurs throughout the photo because of an ambient problem or mechanical/software issue?
I was assuming that color casting could be limited to an area in a photograph...like grass or clothing affecting the tone of someone's skin as it reflects.

Thank you I'mtheguy and adpo for the helps! And JohnBee (you aren't by any chance in AZ are you?), love that edit. That is a yummy looking red on that barn you have managed there and the legs look just like what I was shooting for!

[JohnBee]

Thank you all for your advice!
It seems that my understanding of color casting is faulty from the beginning then? To clarify--color casting is something that occurs throughout the photo because of an ambient problem or mechanical/software issue?
I was assuming that color casting could be limited to an area in a photograph...like grass or clothing affecting the tone of someone's skin as it reflects.

Thank you I'mtheguy and adpo for the helps! And JohnBee (you aren't by any chance in AZ are you?), love that edit. That is a yummy looking red on that barn you have managed there and the legs look just like what I was shooting for!

You're very welcome. And I don't think you're wrong with your definitions either.

However, since color casting is most commonly referred too globally and less commonly addressed locally. This means most adjustments and methods pertinent to color casts(which seek to balance a scene) would not work effectively in this particular case.

BUT... this is by all intended purposes & definition a "color cast" as you yourself said. It's just not the a-typical type most commonly dealt with in photographs.

As for the red barn color, I achieved this with yet another plugin(yep I'm a fan of laziness ) called "Perfectly Clear" which I've been using over the years as a substitute for manual curve adjustments. And some would call me lazy, but hey... I've put in my time with Photoshop(15 years) and so I think I've earned the right to be lazy.

But that first plugin called iCorrect is the only utility(that I know of) that can locally adjust color casts on skin of flesh tones.

Hope this helps.

PS. Oh and I don't live in AZ(sorry), unfortunately, I am stuck on some remote island out in Atlantic Canada. - thank goodness they have internet here!

[kxr4trids]

I'll grant that seeing the color green is not my forte, but to me it looks like the problem is lens flare rather than reflected ambient off the grass. In addition to the cyan color, the dip in contrast is a giveaway. lasso+feather+levels would tweak it up.