Editing Help (Lightroom CC)

Hey everybody, I need help, I'm struggling to my colours correct when shooting under artificial lighting at a local sports stadium.
the skin tones look odd and I can't figure out how to get the best results. I shoot in Jpeg because I work to a tight deadline and PP is not really my strong point.

I've added an un-edited image (& you can download the original here) of a photo that I would love people to have a play with and then maybe save me the light room preset as your user name and flick it to me via e-mail (jason(at)actionimages​.net.nz) I'll try it on a few other images taken on the same night and see how it works.

I know it's a lot to ask but some of you might be interested in sharing your PP skills with the community, feel free to upload your results here also.

Thanks in advance,

Jason

Milutiche wrote in post #18074151
Hey everybody, I need help, I'm struggling to my colours correct when shooting under artificial lighting at a local sports stadium.
the skin tones look odd and I can't figure out how to get the best results. I shoot in Jpeg because I work to a tight deadline and PP is not really my strong point.

I've added an un-edited image (& you can download the original here) of a photo that I would love people to have a play with and then maybe save me the light room preset as your user name and flick it to me via e-mail (jason(at)actionimages​.net.nz) I'll try it on a few other images taken on the same night and see how it works.

I know it's a lot to ask but some of you might be interested in sharing your PP skills with the community, feel free to upload your results here also.

Thanks in advance,

Jason

Hosted photo: posted by Milutiche in
./showthread.php?p=180​74151&i=i179558395
forum: RAW, Post Processing & Printing

You're probably better off shooting using a custom white balance.

what is the best way to set custom white balance when using a telephoto (300mm) lens on a 7d2, I cant exactly hold out a white card and take a shot of it. I don't know if there is anything at the venue that I could use to calibrate against.

another reason to shoot RAW. recommend you learn how to PP.

I have to say that to me it looks as if your WB is actually pretty close, at least as far as white stuff goes. To me the whites in the uniforms, the ball and the background all look pretty neutral to me. One of the issues is that there will be a lot of green/yellow light being reflected up from the grass of the pitch, so areas that are being predominantly lit by that reflected light will have a significant colour cast, compared to the directly illuminated subjects. Apart from the guy doing the low tackle, everyone else seems to be pretty OK. The guy going the low tackle has quite a bit of extra green thanks to his proximity to the grass. There is very little you can do to correct that.

My screen is currently not colour calibrated, but my images still seem to have a very good correlation to their prints. I also viewed the images on my Samsung Galaxy Note 3, and the colours also seem the same on that device, as they do on the computer.

Alan

For difficult white balance cases, the 'White balance > Tune' color wheel in Canon's Digital Photo Professional (DPP) is a godsend.

To be able to use it you must shoot in raw, but you can make only the WB adjustment and convert to jpg. Both operations can be done in batch in a short time.

Go out to the field any night before game night, when the lights are on. Carry your gray card with you.

Stick a piece of tape on the corner of the card and label it "field lights reference" or something meaningful with the date and the name of the field. Walk onto the field, take a raw picture of the gray card, so that the label is on the edge of the frame where you can read it but it won't be part of the custom WB calculation. Save it the image, lock it so it can't be deleted. Put it on a different card if you must.

Then on the night of the game, bring up that saved reference image and use it to set your custom WB.

If the game is during the sunset hours, that transition from golden hour through dark night, then you'll need to adjust your WB several times throughout the game. Maybe hang out at the field, take several reference images (every 15 minutes or half hour), adjust your WB when there's a brief lull in the game, a timeout or whatever.


Having said all that: The vapor lights that they use at the stadium might not give off a "clean" spectrum that can even be properly balanced with a simple gray card.

To my eye, the faces look a bit green. I took your photo into Lightroom and did the eye dropper WB correction using the nice white logo on the blue uniform. It did -2 on the temp and +6 on the tint so your WB is pretty close judging by that. It did make the faces look a slight bit better with the adjustment.

It looks like the light is pretty good at that stadium (1/800, f3.2, iSO 2500). Have you noticed any color shifting between frames there? If not, I'd try to do a custom WB shot before a game there if possible. Have someone, like a security guard, hold a white or gray card out in the stadium light before the game begins then save that WB so that you can go back to it the next time you are there, assuming you shoot there regularly.

If there is color shifting between frames I'd keep doing what you are doing.

The white balance in the DB JPEG seems fine, in terms of neutrals I would guess are neutral (the logo text in the background, the player's white shorts, the ball, etc.). The stadium lighting could be such that it does funky things with skin tones, requiring some targeted correction. The skin tones appear greenish, as noted by @bpalermini. To target the skin tones, you can use the HSL sliders - use the H slider for oranges first and shift the oranges toward red - then fine tune with the yellows slider, shifting toward orange. Use the yellows slider sparingly, as there is a lot of yellow in the green grass and the yellows adjustment will become obvious, but not horrible, in the grass green.

The idea is to target the skin (yellows and reds) so that you can remove green from it (by adding red and some yellow). Also note that there will be green fill light illuminating some areas of the players, etc. because of stadium lighting bouncing off of the grass - check critical tones that face away from the grass, etc. when editing skin tones.

Using this approach, as opposed to a brush-based local correction, allows this small change to be sync'ed across images without worrying about brushes not being applied in the correct location for skin. This may become an issue if critical image components (like jerseys or logos, etc.) share the same colors as the correction that is targeting the skin. Shifting the colors may result in undesirable changes in color critical elements in the image beyond the skin.

That said, I used:

ORANGES: shift H -25
YELLOWS: shift H -10

on the Dropbox image.

You could do this with a Curves adjustment as well on the Green curve (pulling Green down slightly from the 3/4 tones to the 1/4 tones or so) but that would shift the luminance of the image as well, because LR does not have blending modes.

kirk

This is straight out of Camera Raw with no PP. It looks fine on my color managed screen. Nice shot.

BigAl007 wrote in post #18074263
I have to say that to me it looks as if your WB is actually pretty close, at least as far as white stuff goes. To me the whites in the uniforms, the ball and the background all look pretty neutral to me. One of the issues is that there will be a lot of green/yellow light being reflected up from the grass of the pitch, so areas that are being predominantly lit by that reflected light will have a significant colour cast, compared to the directly illuminated subjects. Apart from the guy doing the low tackle, everyone else seems to be pretty OK. The guy going the low tackle has quite a bit of extra green thanks to his proximity to the grass. There is very little you can do to correct that.

My screen is currently not colour calibrated, but my images still seem to have a very good correlation to their prints. I also viewed the images on my Samsung Galaxy Note 3, and the colours also seem the same on that device, as they do on the computer.

Alan

Cheers Alan, yeah I think it's the reflection from the grass that is getting me confused, maybe I'll try a gradient filter with some light HSL adjustments to overcome it.

agedbriar wrote in post #18074302
For difficult white balance cases, the 'White balance > Tune' color wheel in Canon's Digital Photo Professional (DPP) is a godsend.

To be able to use it you must shoot in raw, but you can make only the WB adjustment and convert to jpg. Both operations can be done in batch in a short time.

yeah I know I should shoot RAW but the importing & processing time as well as the extra storage space required doesn't quite work for me at the moment, when I can afford a new PC I might switch back to raw.

nathancarter wrote in post #18074326
Go out to the field any night before game night, when the lights are on. Carry your gray card with you.

Stick a piece of tape on the corner of the card and label it "field lights reference" or something meaningful with the date and the name of the field. Walk onto the field, take a raw picture of the gray card, so that the label is on the edge of the frame where you can read it but it won't be part of the custom WB calculation. Save it the image, lock it so it can't be deleted. Put it on a different card if you must.

Then on the night of the game, bring up that saved reference image and use it to set your custom WB.

If the game is during the sunset hours, that transition from golden hour through dark night, then you'll need to adjust your WB several times throughout the game. Maybe hang out at the field, take several reference images (every 15 minutes or half hour), adjust your WB when there's a brief lull in the game, a timeout or whatever.


Having said all that: The vapor lights that they use at the stadium might not give off a "clean" spectrum that can even be properly balanced with a simple gray card.

This is some very good advice that I'll try to implement before my next match, I can't get to the ground prior to the matches as it is closed to the public and the lighting wouldn't be on anyway, but I will try using a grey card shot as a reference point, most games should be in consistent light as they start after sundown.

bpalermini wrote in post #18074330
To my eye, the faces look a bit green. I took your photo into Lightroom and did the eye dropper WB correction using the nice white logo on the blue uniform. It did -2 on the temp and +6 on the tint so your WB is pretty close judging by that. It did make the faces look a slight bit better with the adjustment.

It looks like the light is pretty good at that stadium (1/800, f3.2, iSO 2500). Have you noticed any color shifting between frames there? If not, I'd try to do a custom WB shot before a game there if possible. Have someone, like a security guard, hold a white or gray card out in the stadium light before the game begins then save that WB so that you can go back to it the next time you are there, assuming you shoot there regularly.

If there is color shifting between frames I'd keep doing what you are doing.

There is some color shifting when I move around the stadium and I tend to move quite a lot, there are also some parts in the ingoal area that are a bit darker than other areas due to lighting placement that mean shooting in manual is very difficult

kirkt wrote in post #18074345
The white balance in the DB JPEG seems fine, in terms of neutrals I would guess are neutral (the logo text in the background, the player's white shorts, the ball, etc.). The stadium lighting could be such that it does funky things with skin tones, requiring some targeted correction. The skin tones appear greenish, as noted by @bpalermini. To target the skin tones, you can use the HSL sliders - use the H slider for oranges first and shift the oranges toward red - then fine tune with the yellows slider, shifting toward orange. Use the yellows slider sparingly, as there is a lot of yellow in the green grass and the yellows adjustment will become obvious, but not horrible, in the grass green.

The idea is to target the skin (yellows and reds) so that you can remove green from it (by adding red and some yellow). Also note that there will be green fill light illuminating some areas of the players, etc. because of stadium lighting bouncing off of the grass - check critical tones that face away from the grass, etc. when editing skin tones.

Using this approach, as opposed to a brush-based local correction, allows this small change to be sync'ed across images without worrying about brushes not being applied in the correct location for skin. This may become an issue if critical image components (like jerseys or logos, etc.) share the same colors as the correction that is targeting the skin. Shifting the colors may result in undesirable changes in color critical elements in the image beyond the skin.

That said, I used:

ORANGES: shift H -25
YELLOWS: shift H -10

on the Dropbox image.

You could do this with a Curves adjustment as well on the Green curve (pulling Green down slightly from the 3/4 tones to the 1/4 tones or so) but that would shift the luminance of the image as well, because LR does not have blending modes.

kirk

Thanks Kirk, I'll take this advice on board and try adding a bit of red and yellow to reduce the green from the reflected light off the grass.