Help correct green spotlight on skin - preferably in LR3

Took some photos at a show this past weekend, trying to wrap them up now.

The spotlight was all sorts of different colors all night. It added a lot to the show, but it made the photography hard. Fortunately, there were a few white reference points in the background that helped me clean it up.

I want to do something better with this one, but I've just about hit the limit of my expertise. I'm reasonably proficient in LR3 but still mostly a novice in Photoshop. I'd like to keep the work in LR3 but if I have to work in CS5 for this particular image, so be it. The performer will be grateful to have it.

My effort so far: Based on picking a WB reference from other photos from this performance, I pushed the Tint slider all the way to the right (+150), and ticked up the Temp slider from 5200 to 6750. Then I went into HSL and changed the Hues as follows: 0, -20, -35, -80, -100, -20, 0, 0, 0.

The original:

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​479821561/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​479821231/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​479820789/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​479820365/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​479837529/

Bump.

Good luck. With strongly artificial light sources, the wavelengths of light available aren't there to give you good color balance with any sort of tweaking at all. The best you can hope for is an appealing selection of false color.

For the green pic, you need a better skin tone target; it's way too yellow right now. For the second pic, the fabric in the lower right is clearly messed up colorwise; you're essentially working with a picture with no red in it at all and fabricating it when using white balance.

Can you upload the raw file for the green image?

kirk

I think this will work for the raws.

I included another image that isn't a "keeper" but has some white reference points in the background.

https://www.dropbox.co​m …e24f40251353113​045ccef083

Thanks for uploading the files. This is the kind of shot where you find out that not all raw conversion applications are created equal. The green shot demands the ability to shift the RGB channels significantly to bring them into "neutral" alignment. I tried several of my converters and the only one that could really handle the adjustment without making a mess of the details was Raw Photo Processor - not surprising if you have ever used it. Here is a screen shot of the conversion with the settings - because there is no neutral I used RPP's Auto WB:

Here is the other image with the mixed lighting.

kirk

Kirk,

Many thanks for the info and the brief tutorial. I'll give RPP a shot, though it may be a bit beyond my capabilities right now to understand what I'm doing well enough to make her skin look "real"

You're right that the lighting is a nightmare - there are overhead lights that cycle through blue, pink, and white; and there's a spotlight that's a different color for every number. You can see in the second shot, the overhead lights were probably pink in at least part of the number. Still, it's better than the previous venue they performed at, which had practically no lighting except for a projector that either showed the venue's logo (ouch), or a plain blue screen (double ouch!)