Selective Color Adjustments

Het Folks,

All critique welcomed on these shots of course. But specifically, I'd like feedback on the color adjustments that I made. The first image is the original. In the second image, I used selective color in PS and on the green channel I darkened the greens and bumped up their cyan percentage, and on the red channel I brightened it and bumped up the magenta. The changes are subtle but you can noticed a darkening in the greenery in the background as well as a slight color change. And with the red changes, the clothing that is red gets brighter and has a slight color change. As well, people's skin tone is modified slightly.

I don't know which objectively looks better, so I'm looking for a little feedback. As I mentioned, any other critiques on levels, contrast, etc. are welcomed as well.

Thanks.

To be honest, I don't see much of a difference. Perhaps the greens are a bit more saturated, but I don't think I would have noticed without you first pointing it out. As for the reds, I suppose the top half of his shirt is somewhat lighter, but I have to ask, so what?

If your intention was to darken the greens and lighten the reds, then you sort of succeeded. If your intention was to improve the image, I think your efforts would be better spent working on the shadows, cropping, and haze that is spoiling the back row. The 3 people on the bench look good, but everyone else needs a bit of touch-up.

Thank you for the feedback. I'm self-taught on PS. So I'm finding my way in the dark. I was playing a little bit with the Shadows/Highlights tool. I'm not sure how to go about dealing with the haze spoiling the back row. This is already a crop, I have a lot of space on all sides to extend the image if needed. I cropped out a puddle in the foreground in front of everyone.

Could you point me in the direction to work on those things you mentioned? The haze, shadows and what you think would improve the crop?

Again, thank you very much for your feedback. It is much appreciated.

mannetti21 wrote in post #17698724
To be honest, I don't see much of a difference. Perhaps the greens are a bit more saturated, but I don't think I would have noticed without you first pointing it out. As for the reds, I suppose the top half of his shirt is somewhat lighter, but I have to ask, so what?

If your intention was to darken the greens and lighten the reds, then you sort of succeeded. If your intention was to improve the image, I think your efforts would be better spent working on the shadows, cropping, and haze that is spoiling the back row. The 3 people on the bench look good, but everyone else needs a bit of touch-up.

Ditto!

Use ACR 9 (adobe camera raw) or LR 6-CC and use the dehaze feature.

Here is the full image out of my camera phone, no cropping.

I was the impromptu photographer for my girlfriend's great grandmother's 95th birthday party. I took 4 shots of this group. In the best one, 2 people were not smiling. So I found two other shots in which they were smiling and used layer masks to paint them in so that everyone in the final photo has their best face shown. I think I did a good job of that as I don't think you could guess which two people have been replaced from other exposures.

Can't see any difference in the colors in the clothing, but the skin tones in the faces look a little bit better in the second photo, a little bit warmer I think. But it's a pretty subtle difference.

It's a snapshot. Not sure what could be done to fix the apparent low resolution, haze, etc.

Dehase in PS and a bit of selective exposure adjustments produced this version. I think working in full rez, especially with the RAW, you could come up with a better version.

AZGeorge,

Thank you for posting that edit. I like it, though it's a bit contrasty to me. I see what the dehase did. Is dehase something fairly new in PS. I cannot find it in my version, I have Photoshop CS3. I'll have to do some googling around to see if there is a plugin or script that brings this functionality into CS3.

What kind of selective exposure adjustments did you do for that edit? I am going to try to replicate that on my full res copy. Unfortunately, I hadn't planned on being the photographer so I only had my phone to take photos, thus no RAW file to work with. But I find that working with the Shadow/Highlights tool I can usually improve the jpeg's out of my Galaxy S4 quite a bit. That, some brightening if needed, and USM at 10%, 50 pixels, 0 levels works as a local contrast enhancement. So there is some stuff that can be done to improve the images, but it's not nearly as powerful if I had had my Canon 40D with me. But you know the saying, what's the best camera? The one you have with you.

PS - On a second look on another monitor the contrast isn't as intense as I first thought it was.

PPS - Thanks to everyone who has commented on this thread and offered suggestions and help. It is much appreciated.

heldGaze wrote in post #17700069
AZGeorge,

Is dehase something fairly new in PS. I cannot find it in my version, I have Photoshop CS3.

What kind of selective exposure adjustments did you do for that edit?

Dehaze is new in CC 2015. Like many other adjustments it works best with RAW files but seems to me still effective with processed versions.

I just quickly added some exposure to faces that seemed shadowed in comparison with those in the front row. That was done using (my favorite new crutch) the Camera Raw filter but would also work using the dodge tool or an adjustment layer.

Photoshop and camera phone...sounds like an oxymoron to me.

Thanks AZGeorge, yeah, I've started using the dodge tool to lighten some people's faces.

chauncey wrote in post #17702395
Photoshop and camera phone...sounds like an oxymoron to me.

Really? It's usually the camera phone that is in real need of some work. Sure, it's not as easy or versatile, but the images out of your phone's camera can quickly and significantly be improved with a few adjustments. My usual steps are: using the Shadow/Highlights tool to deal with photos taken in bad light, Unsharp Mask at 10%, 50 pixels, 0 levels for local contrast enhancement. These two adjustments usually make a significant improvement to many of my phone's camera's photos. Then I'll do any color adjustments, global contrast, sharpening or noise reduction, and brightness fixes that are required. I could link some examples if you'd like to see how much I can improve camera phone photos...

There are also obvious composition & content changes that can be made in PS with camera phone photos. For example, the photo in this thread is a group photo for which I took 4 shots. In none of those shots did I catch everyone smiling or looking at the camera. I layered 3 of those shots in PS and used a hide all layer mask, then painted in two people. Can you tell which two people have been replaced?

I am actually curious at people's guesses as to which 2 people have been replaced in the photo in the OP to see how well I did...

I agree that with RAW files Photoshop becomes a much more powerful tool. But that's not going to stop me from using PS to improve photos that come from a phone or a point & shoot camera.

I want to thank everyone who posted in this thread. Your feedback has been helpful, and I've really formalized my workflow, and remembered to work non-destructively. I've redone the entire image from scratch today. To "dehaze" the faces in the back row, I created a layer, filled it with 50% grey, changed that layer's blend mode to overlay and used the dodge tool at 10% to lighten those faces. I used an Exposure Adjustment Layer like AZGeorge suggested to make some minor exposure changes as well. So from front to back, I layered and aligned my exposures, and used hide all masks and then painted white to expose the individuals I needed to replace with smiling faces. I put all those layers into a Smart Object, and then applied Shadow/Highlights, USM local contrast enhancement, exposure adjustment layer, dodge & burn layer, selective color layer (for the greens in the background), then resized for the web and did output sharpening.

Here's the final result, which I'm pleased with for a crappy camera phone. I'm noticing now that my crop is a bit wider on this version. I may go back to a closer crop before posting this for the family, but I'm not sure which is better honestly.