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Post by BuckSkin on Sept 18, 2019 2:04:01 GMT
My wife took a bunch of photos in a big old hardwood-floored gymnasium with some really weird lighting.
The floor is a very orangish color and everything in the pictures has a heavy orange cast.
We have used the Filter>Blur>Average Levels and Grey Eyedropper trick on countless images and have never ran into this before; the duplicate layer with Filter>Blur>Average is dark orange; click on this solid orange; and, instead of the window turning grey, it turns a very obvious green.
Now here is the weird part, always before, on images with a lot worse cast than these, once I click the grey eyedropper on the orange image and it turns green instead of grey, the lines in the levels dialogue do not come together as a single line.
No matter what I try, there is always that green cast.
In the levels dialogue, there will be three lines; when this works, the three lines merge into a single line; as it is now, the left and center lines will merge together, but the right line insists on staying astray.
I have deleted preferences and restarted the machine = no change.
I opened E12 and tried it = no change.
I opened one of the images on a different machine and the problem was still there.
Out of the thousands of images that I have used this trick on, these are the first I have ran into that insist on not cooperating.
Has anyone ran into this situation and is there a fix ?
Thanks for reading and all help is appreciated.
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pontiac1940
CE Members
Posts: 6,356
Open to constructive criticism of photos: Yes
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Post by pontiac1940 on Sept 18, 2019 2:14:06 GMT
I am unable to comment on the solution in PSE. But ..
What type of lighting? Fluorescent? What shutter speeds?
Gyms can have horrid lighting. Out on a limb here...Regrading the orange, I am just wondering if there conflict with shutter speed and the 60 cycle power source. Somewhere I have examples of what you describe that was caused by a conflict of speeds and fluorescent cycling. (I'll have to think this through....I won't have that example on my hard drives at the summer place.)
EDIT: Or the weird color could simply be a function of WB and you need to match the WB setting with the type of lighting.
But this does not help your correction problem about which I can't offer a suggestion unless you color correct in ACR. (You can open jpgs in ACR if you shot in jpg vs raw.)
Clive
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pontiac1940
CE Members
Posts: 6,356
Open to constructive criticism of photos: Yes
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Post by pontiac1940 on Sept 18, 2019 3:25:18 GMT
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Post by Sepiana on Sept 18, 2019 5:24:38 GMT
We have used the Filter>Blur>Average Levels and Grey Eyedropper trick on countless images and have never ran into this before; the duplicate layer with Filter>Blur>Average is dark orange; click on this solid orange; and, instead of the window turning grey, it turns a very obvious green. I have deleted preferences and restarted the machine = no change. I opened E12 and tried it = no change. I opened one of the images on a different machine and the problem was still there. BuckSkin, I have to admit I am baffled; this should not be happening. As you yourself found out, the Average Blur filter has proven again and again to be very effective in removing color cast. As a matter of fact, it is suggested by Barbara Brundage in The Missing Manual. In order to help us focus our troubleshooting, let's revisit this technique. Will you please confirm these are the steps you are following? 1. Create a copy of the layer (ctrl or cmd+J) 2. Filter, Blur, Average 3. Create a levels adjustment layer, then 4. Select the gray eyedropper, click on the Blur, Average layer 5. Delete/turn off the visibility of the layer copy you created in step 1 Are you using this variation? 1. Duplicate the layer (Ctrl-J). 2. Apply the Average Blur filter. 3. Change the Blur layer blending mode to Color. 4. Invert the Blur layer (Ctrl-I). 5. Reduce the Opacity of the Blur layer to about 50%. |
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Post by BuckSkin on Sept 18, 2019 10:16:23 GMT
Pontiac = I will try to remember to post all three versions; before anything is done, the solid color blur>average layer, and the orange layer turned green.
I have an engagement tomorrow (well, I guess it is actually later today), so it may be the next day.
As for the lights, I think they are those ignorant sodium vapor whatchamacallits that are so prevalent these days in any big steel-frame open-structure building; the kind that take about an hour to come to full brightness on a hot day and you have to carry a torch to see where you are going in the winter.
I do a lot of work in the middle of the night in huge stock-yards, sorting and penning and loading cattle, and having to read wrinkled excrement-covered stock-yard sticker-tags plumb across the pens and over the backs of a hundred other animals.
In the modern yards with the modern "environmentally friendly" lights, this is a nightmare, akin to working by candle-light; in the old yards, on the other hand, with plenty of big old Thomas Edison 600-Watt screw-in incandescants, it is better than being outside on a clear day.
The phrase "lit up like a stockyard" refers to the old ones; the modern ones will never live up to the meaning.
Sepiana = I am following the first example, the Major quote, to the letter.
I was unaware of the second method that you posted; I will try it; who knows, maybe on these particular images it will do the trick.
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Post by Sepiana on Sept 18, 2019 11:22:42 GMT
Sepiana = I am following the first example, the Major quote, to the letter. I was unaware of the second method that you posted; I will try it; who knows, maybe on these particular images it will do the trick. BuckSkin, give it a try and let us know how it goes. You could also try these other techniques to remove color cast: - Auto Color Correction (Enhance>Auto Color Correction) - Remove Color Cast (Enhance>Adjust Color>Remove Color Cast) - Color Variations (Enhance>Adjust Color>Color Variations) - The Raw Converter - Photo Filter - Levels NOTE: Adobe removed Color Variations from PSE 12. However, it can be put back if you want to. Or, as an alternative, you could use Auto Smart Tone, a new feature introduced in PSE 12. |
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Post by BuckSkin on Sept 18, 2019 12:21:54 GMT
I did already try "Remove Color Cast" and it changed the images from the heavy orange cast to a Grinchy green.
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Post by tonyw on Sept 18, 2019 14:23:00 GMT
If the lights were anything like the sodium lighting we used to have in town here it was virtually impossible to remove the colour cast. That type of lighting is monochromatic (just one single colour) so thats the only colour the camera sees. Although you can change that colour in post processing it will likely always have a colour cast because seeing “normal” colours requires having full spectrum lighting. When our town switched to full spectrum LED lighting all the colour cast problems with night photography disappeared.
Tony
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Post by BuckSkin on Sept 18, 2019 22:06:24 GMT
If the lights were anything like the sodium lighting we used to have in town here it was virtually impossible to remove the colour cast. That type of lighting is monochromatic (just one single colour) so thats the only colour the camera sees. Although you can change that colour in post processing it will likely always have a colour cast because seeing “normal” colours requires having full spectrum lighting. When our town switched to full spectrum LED lighting all the colour cast problems with night photography disappeared. Tony You may very well have hit the nail on the head. When I get a bit of time, I will post some examples and anyone that wants to can try their luck on them. |
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Post by BuckSkin on Sept 19, 2019 19:20:39 GMT
Image with Orange Color Cast  Orange Layer after Filter > Blur > Average  Screenshot of Levels; Note the three separate lines in the histogram (Yellow Arrows)  Screenshot of Levels After Grey Sample; Note that two of the lines have merged (Red Arrow) and the left side line remains separate (Yellow Arrow); when this works, all three lines will merge into a single line  After taking the Grey Sample, the layer has turned Green instead of Grey  The resulting image after discarding the Blur > Average layer  I can help these images a lot in DxO, in fact almost get them right; however, I cannot understand why the simple Filter > Blur > Average trick that has worked flawlessly on tens of thousands of images refuses to work on these. tonyw theory is the best answer I can think of. Feel free to try your luck on this image with the various tricks that have always worked before. I know that fiddling around with the RAW file will make a lot of difference, messing with white balance and such, but just pretend that all you have is a jpeg and plain old Elements to work with. |
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Post by hmca on Sept 19, 2019 19:47:20 GMT
Tried this quickly and I think it looks pretty good but I don't know what it should look like. I used the blur method you describe. The only thing I did differently than usual was to adjust the levels middle slider at the end and pull over the white slider as shown below.   |
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Post by fotofrank on Sept 19, 2019 20:00:30 GMT
 Steps Duplicate the Image Invert the Image Filter>Blur>Average Blendmode Softlight Add cooling photo filter (LBB) Blendmode Lighten Create a composite and you can adjust from this point  |
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Post by BuckSkin on Sept 19, 2019 20:20:20 GMT
hmca = That looks a lot better; how did you get an actual histogram in the Levels dialogue instead of the three lines that I get after using the Blur method ?
fofofrank = I never thought of inverting
I will show both results to the wife and let her choose which effect she prefers
The next time she goes there, or anywhere similar, I am going to remind her to take a few Grey Card shots so that we will have a reference to a known color.
This business of selecting a spot that is supposed to be grey, white, or black does not work when there is no such spot.
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Post by hmca on Sept 19, 2019 20:36:17 GMT
Hi Buckskin. I used the full version of PS as I thought the levels adjustment would work the same in both. I just pulled up this video to check and it seems that this is possible in PE 7 which I see that you have. I took a screenshot of part of the video.  Hope that helps. I also was able to see the three lines that you refer to:  |
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Post by hmca on Sept 19, 2019 20:58:44 GMT
fotofrank , I like your second image! That looks perfect to me!
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