Advice request: Maintaining a consistent look within a set

When I shoot a set, I want it to come together as a set, as a story - not just a bunch of individual pictures. I'm looking for advice on making a whole set of images look consistent: General ideas and concepts, what I should train myself to look for in each image of the set, or using specific tools and shortcuts to achieve results.

I'm using LR3 (skill level: reasonably competent) and CS5 (skill level: half a notch above novice, but rapidly learning). I'm decent with white balance and have gotten in the habit of using a gray card at least once or twice during a shoot.

Some examples:
1) I shot a set with a model and a brick building. The lighting changed over the course of the set - the sun was setting, some shots had flash and some didn't. How can I make sure the set stays consistent - the tones and hues of the model's skin, the textures and colors of the bricks, etc? Using a gray card several times over the course of the set will help, but it feels like there's more to it than that.

Some of the shots, I've intentionally desaturated or otherwise "creatively" edited so they're like a sub-set. But most of the images are standard editing, so they need to be consistent from the beginning of the story to the end.

2) I shot a burlesque performance at a local nightclub. There's a stage with white and black panel backdrops, no spotlight, just continually changing dance-floor-style lighting. I did not use flash, just a wide aperture to try to capture the ambiance. During one routine, I did a slow burst mode (like five shots in five seconds), and the images make a really nice sequence - but the lighting changed a bit in hue and intensity over the five shots. I want to try to bring them together so the changing background isn't distracting, and the viewer's attention is solely on the dancer's movements over the series of images.

Perhaps I'm asking the wrong question here. It seems like consistency within a large set is something that would help me push my work to the next level - not just in getting a good exposure for every image (I'd like to think I'm past that), but making sure the images all work well together within the set. Does anyone deny that this is an important goal?

Hmm, that's an interesting question, and I don't have an answer, in fact, I doubt that there is an "easy" answer! Did you shoot in Raw? I'd say that would be an important factor. And, did you set a Custom White Balance, or are you using Lightroom to set the White Balance? But, that won't solve the problem of changing the colors from shot to shot....

As to the outdoor shots, well, the only thing I can think of offhand is to keep an eye on your exposure and be ready to adjust things as you go in the changing light, doing your best to do this in-camera, and then in Lightroom there will be less hassle. But I'm probably not telling you anything you don't already know!

Here are some samples from the two sets, just for conversation.
On the first one, I've done some photoshopping (obviously) and done some tweaking until I thought it looked pretty good - but then I realized that the bricks and tights in the 'shopped one are obviously different than the rest of the set. The second one is a different wall and almost at the end of the shoot, so entirely flash lighting. But I think it must be possible to make it close to the first one. (or change the first one back)

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​065502147/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​065519809/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​074558327/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​075097606/

To me, the second set looks fine.

With the first set, well, if it was me I'd start with the Raw file in Lightroom, and set the White Balance in one and when I was happy with it then I would Sync to the others.

Now since you used flash with one and ambient with the other, that could throw things off, so you may require a different WB setting between the two. In that case, well, you can do the WB once in each set then Sync the two sets separately.

One thing about Syncing to watch for: to properly do this you want you "model" shot to be something other than "As Shot" -- either a preset that will work for the whole set or setting it in the first one so that "Custom" shows up as the "value" in the WB panel.

Now, as to having a shot you adjusted in Photoshop and trying to match the resulting tiff/psd/jpeg in Lightroom to the other files, that is a tougher question. You can't apply the WB of the tiff to your Raw files, at least not in any way that makes sense to me. So, you can use it and try to "eyeball" things with a Raw file to get the WB as close as possible, pleasing to you, then Sync to the other Raw files in the set. I'd proably try that approach. To me, the less Photoshopping I have to do, the better!

Of course if you need to use Photoshop to match things up, well, if it was me I'd make sure I had layers that did the needed work and then I'd want to create an Action that applied common layers with common adjustments and then you could either run the action before making individual adjustments to each image or, if possible, you could run the Photoshop Image Processor out of Bridge if you can get a "one action does all" handy situation.

In fact, to get even more fancy, you can design a Photoshop action and save it as a "droplet" than is then accessible to an external process, whether it be do drag and drop an image file on it, or, for Lightroom, you can use Eport to both convert and image and then, in the Export Post-processing panel, you can, in the After Exporting drop-down list, choose your Droplet to automatically run.

Photoshop actions are very useful and powerful. Each approach to using them requires some different design considerations, and so you may have three different actions that do the "same thing", one for using in the editor, one for the Image Processor, and one as a droplet, and it sounds like a lot of work, but if you need to Photoshop a lot of images with the same basic processing, nothing beats a good set of actions!

In the right model (ISO6400) shot, go to the "calibration" tab, and set the red hue slider to -5 or -10. That will shift the yellowish skin a bit toward magenta to match the left better. (Or add some magenta all together)

Try more tint green (or +10 red hue in calibration) for the second "bricks" shot.

On the first series: If you have changing daylight mixed with a constant lightsource (flash), you can change the balance in camera (slower shutterspeed as ambient levels fall), but you'd have to gel the flash to match ambient color change, or you'll have a lot of work in PP. As you noticed. And there's the fact that ambient light change might change contrast as well… PP hell.

Mixing lightsources always leads to problems if the "mix" changes in any way (ratio or color).