Issues blending two seperate white balance photos together

Hello everyone,

I recently shot a 360 photo that I will be turning into a virtual tour. Problem is though that the multiple WB sources have got me completely stumped. I've been working on this since morning and trying all sorts of tutorials but not getting any great results.

The best success I've had has been to mask each layer and paint by hand with a brush. Very time consuming and it generally leaves a bleeding edge of each mask as they are so evidently opposite.

I use CS5 and LR3. Nearly all the tutorials I've found deal with a similar issue but the problem that I find in this situation is that the rock of the cave is VERY textured so I can't get an accurate mask.

Any suggestions?

Also open to hearing how this could be helped when shooting the images as well, if it is even possible to help.

Thanks

Can you set all the shots to daylight WB, merge them, and then remove the yellow via a hue/sat layer in Ps?

Try to get the input images as close as possible in Lightroom before importing into Photoshop for the pano. One approach I've used is to get the color where I want it in one image, then use the eye dropper to read the RBB value in a specific critical color. Next go to another image and put the eye dropper in the same color and see what it says. Then use the temp, tent and color sliders to get it to the same value.
Also remember there is a tool in the HSL panel that lets you drag it to change color values for a specific color when you click on it.

My workflow with the panos is like this ...

• Covert images from RAW to Tiff in Bridge with image processor and any needed global adjustments
  
• Stitch photos together with PTGui
  
• In port into Lightroom to fine tune image
  
• Remove any weird artifacts, add nadir logo, sharpen
  
• Image itself is now finished
  

Not perfect but here's what I got after a few minutes in LR playing with the HSL sliders.
Taking it into PS and attacking the blues would probably add some.

dmward wrote in post #16037526
Not perfect but here's what I got after a few minutes in LR playing with the HSL sliders

Hi dmward, I don't actually see any attachment?

The original images indicate a mix of that sickly yellowish (sodium vapor lamp?) and blue lighting. If the blue lighting is for artistic purposes (to make the water appear blue, add to the mood, etc.) then you probably don't want to neutralize it completely. In any event, you essentially want to be able to control the yellow and blue balance separately. Even with the low-res JPEGs that are HEAVILY compressed here, you can get a good blue mask; however, you have to do some atrocious moves to the image to get a donor image for masking purposes.

Take the image above that has been balanced for the yellowish light (the image that has more intense blues) and convert it to LAB. Then make a curves adjustment layer. THe goal here is to separate blue and yellow further away from each other. Because blue and yellow are at opposite ends of the B channel in LAB, this is easy to do. You can also completely remove magenta (close to red) and green from the picture if you wish, as I will demonstrate here.

So, in your curves adjustment layer, make a flat horizontal curve in the A curve as shown in the first attached image - this gets rid of all magenta and green in the image. In the B curve, make a steep linear move that is symmetric about the mid point of the B channel - you do this by bringing in each endpoint toward the middle. In the attached image, I show an adjustment of each endpoint from its outer position into about 35 points from the mid point.

Now you should have an image that looks blue and yellow! You can covert this image back to RGB and grab the blue channel as your mask - the blue areas will be closer to white and the yellow areas closer to black. In this state, the mask will reveal the blue areas of your original image and you can make a curves or levels adjustment to bring blue to an acceptable level in your image - Invert the mask and you can make a similar adjustment to neutralize the yellowish cast. Once you have gotten your color balance under control, you can make color enhancing adjustments that won't completely destroy or bring out one color compared to the others, etc.

The masks can also be used to blend two separately balanced images - same approach, use the mask that reveals blue to let the blue balanced image show, and use the inverted mask to let the image balanced against the yellowish cast to show.

kirk

Here is the resulting blue-yellow image and the corresponding blue channel, with a Gaussian blur of 10px added to soften the mask.

kirk

Thanks dmward, I see your attachment now, It is a lot clearer then I managed to get it with the sliders.

That is some great information Kirk. Let's see if I can replicate this. I appreciate the screenshots as well, that helps tremendously!

For reference ...

Here is an image of what the pool looks like generally. It naturally looks a little turquoise, there is no blue in the cave so the only cause of that is the WB in my photos.

kirkt wrote in post #16038968
Here is the resulting blue-yellow image and the corresponding blue channel, with a Gaussian blur of 10px added to soften the mask.

kirk

Your method has worked really well! thank you! I got a slight magenta cast in the image now but that should be a lot easier to deal with then this mess.

Here is what I got with my Blue/Yellow

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Alright, now with the color corrected a bit and a few flare spots removed I've managed to get to this: