Help with yellow lighting....

here is a pic i took lastnight with my XT.... and the lighting of the parking lot is horrible... and i was wondering how can i make the pics look less yellowish? with PS or setting on the cam? what is the best setting to use for night shots? thanks in advance for comments and help....

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Hi, I believe that the answer is: "both". Set the white balance of your camera for tungten lights, and your camera will somehow balance the yellow color. After that, you can work with Photoshop to improve your colors. If you want, I can try balancing a little the colours.

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Shooting in RAW should help out a lot as well. You can adjust the white balance after the shot was taken.

BTW, night shots of cars are really nice. I like what you've got there, with the right WB it should look pretty nice. I need to wax up my little rice rocket and see how it does

Hope that helps

thanks for the comments everyone.... yea i tried to get rid of the yellow in PS but it just takes away the color of the car.... is there any filters i can add to help take out the yellow??? thanks again...

I don't think that there is such a thing as a "best setting for night shots" - there is too much variation in night lights. In this case the lighting seems to be what they call sodium vapor lighting, which is very yellow. Among the camera settins, the Incandescent lighting would have been the best choice. And, as someone else suggested, RAW mode would allow you to do that in post processing.

The effort by Tiziano was well intentioned and somewhat effective, but I think you can clearly see that once the color balance is seriously warped, just trying to make a simple adjustment of the color balance in post processing can turn ugly. The parking lot pavement now looks green in some areas and a weird shade of magenta-pink in other areas - neither of which seem natural.

The further off is the initial color balance the harder it will be to correct without bad side effects.

Recommendation - use RAW mode and try to diagnose the color balance problems before the shot - not after. We all recognize that the human eye compensates to a degree that makes it more difficult to recognize the problem. However, whenever you are confonted with outdoor night-time lighting, take it for granted that color balance was not on their minds - light efficiency was all they were thinking about, and sodium vapor is very economical.

Sodium Vapor lights are particularly brutal. They don't produce wavelengths through the entire visible spectrum, and usually even the tungsten setting in the camera will be way off.

These situations call for a custom white balance, and shooting RAW gives you some insurance.

Yup, low-pressure sodium vapor lights are nasty for color. Custom white balance will get you about as close as you're going to be able to get. I usually use something that is "white" under normal light (a styrofoam plate or a blank sheet of paper, it doesn't have to be anything exotic). Under sodium vapor lights you're never going to get a true representation of the color - their spectrum is just too narrow and weird.

True. There IS only yellow in the spectrum.
Try this instead next time:
A few Car Lighting Tips

Other examples here.

thanks everyone for the help and tips.... ill try to go out tonight and play with the WB and see what i can come up with....

PhotosGuy those are great tips... and u have some awesome pics....