Help with night photography

[neil_r]

I really have a problem with night photography in cities. There are so many sodium lights that it is nigh on impossible (for me at any rate) to get rid of the yellow/brown colour cast.

I really like the colour pic, but the cast does spoil it. I also like the B&W one.

The two questions I want help with are.

1. How would you get rid of the colour cast?
2. If you could only keep one of these pictures, which one would you keep?

and, of course any other critique you may wish to give


http://www.neil-rice.com/gallery/photo/large/newcastle_28_7_04_0065a.jpg

http://www.neil-rice.com/gallery/photo/large/newcastle_28_7_04_0065abw.jpg

Thanks

N

[midnightvue]

Start playing with your White Balance. That should help get rid of the amber tones that show up in many cityscape type shots.

Nice composition btw on the shot above.

[PhotosGuy]

I LIKE the warm feeling of #1!

But, if you must change it, try
Image>Adjustments / Color Balance

Or, Image>Adjustments / Hue/Saturation & reduce the saturation of an idividual color chosen in the EDIT field.

Or, Image>Adjustments / Replace Color

Read some of the stuff in Post Processing, too.

[BCdives]

Very Nice Neil,

I have to tell ya, I like them both alot, the WB on the camera would be the first thing I would play with, do you use Color Temp mode, or just the standard settings?? I would experiment with the color temp.

As far as the color cast, it really isn't that bad. I tweeked it on PS/CS and it came out easily. Actually, I think at night a touch of the yellow cast adds a little warmth, plus the reality is, a lot of what you are seeing IS actually yellow haze from the sodium lights.

The exposure and compostion is really excellent, keep em coming!

BC

[deermatt]

i think they both look really good!

[arumdevil]

download this and paste your photo in beneath the levels adjustment layer and see if that is closer to what you want.

it's a .PSD file (http://www.arumdevil.com/stuff/pics/photo/night.psd.zip)

obviously it would be better to get the WB right when you take the shot but this might help for shots you already have. basically in the levels dialog box I set the black point with the left eye dropper, the white point with the right eye dropper, and used the middle eye dropper to set the "white balance" (grey point). i took the reading for the middle one somewhere around the bridge turret.

Personally I like the amber cast more though!

let me know what you think.

[arumdevil]

sorry, I made the assumption that you use photoshop. i hope that wasn't too bold :D

[neil_r]

let me know what you think.

Thanks arumdevil, your colours are far more accurate, however looking at them side by side I am not sure if I don't prefer the warm one :?

I have put the corrected one on my web site and given you a credit :D

this is what it looks like for any of you following the thread.

http://www.neil-rice.com/gallery/photo/large/newcastle_28_7_04_0065acc.jpg

N

[rick barclay]

Too much blue for my taste. I prefer the top one.

[Aylwin]

Neil, I saw this photo earlier on your website and was thinking of asking you how you made the sky brown. I guess this thread answers my question. :oops:

By the way, I tried out arumdevil's method for myself (always trying to learn). For gray point, I used the shaded part of what looks like a white ship (or building?) underneath the bridge. The result came out quite okay, I think. I believe the colors are more accurate but there's still a slightly warm cast. But then I suppose anyone could play around with color adjustments to make any picture more to their liking.

Anyway, that's a great photo there! Well done! :)