Color Temp. Problems

here's a workup - without seeing the original scene...touched up the skin alittle - touched up the red top - added a little contrast...

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Hi Sharlene,
I think the problem is the color cast of the sensor, after removing a notorious red cast (can be due to lighting) this is what I got:

haha, LeuceDeuce, you always spend so much time helping other people edit their photos. i don't even have enough time to edit my own!

DrFil wrote in post #5845624
haha, LeuceDeuce, you always spend so much time helping other people edit their photos.

LOL it's fun I don't actually spend that much time on these edits. Working with such a small jpg file isn't the best condition to produce art, but I hope to inspire people to get creative with their images and find the fun in post processing them. I really believe that most people aren't aware of what can actually be done to their images.

Sometimes I do spend time shining the unshinable though

DrFil wrote in post #5845624
i don't even have enough time to edit my own!

I'm glad you don't have the time, because according to your bio you should be studying

fenceiner01 wrote in post #5845103
this look any better?

Not unless they are from Mars (little green people). The color balance in that image is way off. Use the eyedropper tool in your editing program to sample the colors of some things such as the "white" bedspread (I presume tat it is white and not green).

Chris, I love your "made to order" grape purple shirt color.

Thanks for trying, the shirt is actually somewhere in between those last two. So, I got my gray card in. and a new computer calibration system. I set up a test shot in natural light with my 3 year old wearing a deep pink/magenta shirt. (pinks and reds are the colors I have the most problems with.) Here are the results:
First I used my light meter to get correct exposure. I first used a F5.6 and 60 shutter speed ISO 100 and using evaluative metering mode.

What gray card are you using?

It still has a red cast (to me)
After correction I got:

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Despite what some photographers say, a gray card is not the best thing to set white balance -- it is simply too dark. If you go to a large photography store and compare different gray cards side by side, you can easily see that they are not all the same color of gray. It is a tool for setting expose level, but for digital photography, the luminance level puts it at a point that is below half of the discrete brightness levels of the digitized image. I would suggest several things that are better:

1. A Gretagmacbeth color checker -- there is a gray scale on the bottom row -- the value next to white or the next darker one are ideal.
   
2. A WhiBal card performs a similar function as the Gretagmacbeth card, but I think that each card has been individually calibrated.
   
3. Not as good as the above choices, but a sheet of plain white paper such as HP LaserJet paper (not one of the bright printer papers ... the have had UV brighteners added).
   
4. A white t-shirt or something else that you judge to be white (this is sort of a last resort approach).

Also, your test shot of the gray card shows very clearly another thing that I have noticed in gray cards for the past few years -- they are slightly textured and not smooth and do not have a uniform gray appearance. If you sample the color at various points, you will find that it varies.

In sampling the gray card with ACR, I found that the temperature varied from about -2 to +3 from the As Shot value which isn't too bad, but the color tint varied between -8 and +8 in the random samples that I found. That much variation in tint is not anything to write home about.

Much of the variation is not really the card itself, but noise in the sensor and electronics. When you take an exposure the inherent noise in a dark area is a larger part of the output value than it is for the brightest area of an image. Obviously, you want to have a sample that has the least amount of noise in order to have the "cleanest" measurement possible.

Bill, I was using a Gretagmacbeth 18% gray card. Would I be able to use the color checker when editing jpegs ? Do you think that white printer paper or t-shirt would be better than the gray card? Do you think cleaning my camera sensor would help the camera to determine color better? I wish I knew more about shooting RAW, it just seems to take up so much room on the card and computer and slower to edit, i just don't have much time to study it.

Lu, I see the color cast. it looks better, but would need a little more saturation to get the correct color of the shirt.

Sharlene wrote in post #5851477
Bill, I was using a Gretagmacbeth 18% gray card. Would I be able to use the color checker when editing jpegs ? Do you think that white printer paper or t-shirt would be better than the gray card? Do you think cleaning my camera sensor would help the camera to determine color better? I wish I knew more about shooting RAW, it just seems to take up so much room on the card and computer and slower to edit, i just don't have much time to study it.

Lu, I see the color cast. it looks better, but would need a little more saturation to get the correct color of the shirt.

I think that the Gretagmacbeth Color Checker card is better for setting white balance -- the 18% reflectance gray card is really intended as an exposure setting card. It can be used for white balance, but my opinion is that it is down the list from a lot of other things that are better. Gretagmacbeth also makes a white balance card that I have used for setting an in-camera custom WB, but for the price tag, I think that a sheet of plain white paper is almost, if not just as good. I like the Color Checker card because it has a row with about six shades of gray and I can sample several of them to see the white balance results. The white and lightest shades of gray give me the best results. Middle gray and darker don't do as well. I think that the idea of using an 18% reflectance gray card to do white balance setting came about because it was convenient and some gray cards are quite close to being neutral gray. I do not think that their color is guaranteed to be neutral and more importantly, what I mentioned about sensor noise affecting accuracy in a previous post is more problematic with darker gray cards. For setting an in-camera CWB, the gray card might be acceptable, but I believe that Canon recommends using a WHITE card. If you are shooting jpg images, then setting an in-camera CWB is more important than shooting RAW.

You do not need to clean your sensor. Cleaning can help if your camera has dust bunnies, but has no effect on white balance and that sort of thing.

Learning about RAW images is a never ending process.

I think the colors in the first one after using the grey card look great, better than the others.

Luigis has a green cast....