Huge color problem.. HELP!! desperate

FIRST i apologize for being soo long winded but i am beside myself and in tears here!!!

SOOO, i do NOT do wedding photography , let alone professional photography for that matter... But i do own a Canon xsi DSLR, 50mm 1.8 lens, and the kit lens, external flash and numerous other accessories and I love shooting my kids for my blog.. i have been told in the past that my pics looked orangish to some and then others tell me the coloring is fine on their monitors so i've never known what to believe as they look great on my monitor... well, for a family friend I agreed to photograph her wedding (my first ever mind you photographing anything other than my kids and family and also i've only owned my dslr camera for 2 months!!) The couple is an older couple (50s) and my aunt was originally just going to take pictures with her point and shoot per the couples request.. It was an extremely informal wedding at the couple's home and very nontraditional in the sense their was no cutting of a cake (no cake) , no bouquet throwing, etc... so mainly they just wanted some nice couple and family photos... SOOOO, i went and it was outdoors on a slightly rainy day which then turned into harsh lighting and shadows, ughhhhhh I ended up taking 700+ photos and my aunt went thru them and we came out with over 100+ from those she really liked alot, not bad right!! thank goodness!!!! so i started editing and decided since normally i don't shoot for print and i do it for my blog we better edit then print a few samples off to make sure the coloring is right.. well, i printed 3 choice pics from Walmart and Walgreens (both 1hr) to at least get 2 opinions and THE COLOR IS AWFUL!!!!!! both printed terrible orangish hue like i imagined.. my parents think they look okay, just really tanned.. but compared to the beautiful balanced pictures on my screen the color couldn't have been worse!!! I am just about to tears at what to do, I compared the pics on my parents monitor to my monitor and even my parents monitor showed the pics beautifully but the prints are orangish!!! SOOOO, i can't buy a new computer or spend tons of money (my dh refuses as I already did this wedding for free and the couple themselves are going to go off and print the pics once i am done editing them etc... so he thinks that they can deal with it and get it edited right... BUT i just can't stand the thought of that! none of them are computer savvy or have photo editing software to begin with... I have dpp and pse 7.0 and i didn't change the color much.. pretty much did an s-curve on the color curves-very slight- , sharpened, noise reduced, and cropped .tightly for a 4x6 per my aunts request ** i will be leaving them uncropped for the couple to get what they want, but my aunt is buying her a bunch of 4x6 so i did some pre crops for those for her** ...

ANYWAY, onto the pictures.. what do you think???? are they tooooooo orange on your screen or could it have been a fluke with walmart and walgreens?? i guarantee this couple will be ordering from somewhere like that as they originally were just going to have my aunt take a few pics during the ceremony with her point and shoot and that's it.. so I tried my best to get some shots that they might like and to be honest I only edited these few sooo far so these really aren't our favorites anyway.. Honestly i don't think i would have picked any of these, lol I have some favorites but like i said we started with the beginning of the batch and just grabbed the first 3 and woolah, these were them... These are tightly cropped compared to the pics i took also.. Please remember and bare with me that i have never photographed a wedding let alone been to more than 2 in my life!! hahaha! These were pictures I took before the ceremony... I don't think the wedding couple was expecting that, but i thought it would be nice.. the couple was hard to photograph.. he was very stiff and she had one lazy eye and i think was stressed about the day that i had a hard time even getting her to look at me, she was focused on all the happenings around her.. so yeah, for what i had to work with, i think i did pretty good.. hopefully once i get this coloring figured out i'll have some pictures i can post later that im actually really proud of (because there are several!!)

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They do not look orange on my screen. If anything, the green is bright. I expect it was the developer (Walgreens.) I have good luck with WalMart, but ONLY the one-hour (they have a good machine); I never ship out or do the overnight. However, many on this board recommend a site called Mpix for perfect prints. (www.mpix.com.) I have not tried them yet myself, but people swear by them. I hope you see a big difference from another developer!

As Cooking Mama would say: "Don't worry, we can fix this!" (imagine a strong Japanese accent).

The greens are a bit off. the skin isn't perfect, but it's OK.

The last one does look a little orange... fixable though.

Have you calibrated your monitor?
Which program do you have for editing?
Did you shoot in RAW?

Thanks for the quick response!! yeah the odd thing is the prints green is not even as bright as these pics but like i said the orange is pretty bad.. they both look pretty darn tanned in the pictures... I really didn't mess with the color much in editing.. to be honest i did very little editing to these pics because i wanted to test the color comparison before i got too deep into editing.. and they do NOT look orange on my camera either??? so if i upload them to mpix.com or somewhere else.. how will i know if the coloring is going to be right with them??? will they tell me if i call and ask?? I just don't know what i can personally do to guarantee -not orange- pictures.. but you never know, they might like having a little tan I know the bride showed me her pantyhose-less legs that she fake tanned with cream for weeks, LOL

I have to remember to that i did this all for free and they were expecting just a point and shoot a few shots from my aunt.. so i am sure what i've got is going to be better than their first choice....

as far as callibration.. i don't own any callibration programs.. i downloaded some today and followed the whole black and white thingy, but when it got to a color profile it said it couldn't recognize my monitor's color or something... I am on a Toshiba Satellite Laptop so i have NO CLUE!! and after running i think it was called Quick Gamma , the pics didn't look any different on my screen, still orange prints compared to the finished product i see on pse 7... hmmmm any recommendations on my next step and how to fix the greens at least??? and in wait way do the greens look to you? on their skin or in the background??

oh, missed your other questions!!
Yes i shot in RAW , i had my white balance set at Auto at most times then i had it set to shade when obviously we were in full shade under those trees... ummm LIke i said i am not sure how to callibrate my monitor or what i need to do it.. i did that quickgamma like i said but it just seemed to work with brightness/contrast...

I use photoshop elements 7.0 and adobe camera raw .. at least that's what i did with these.. I could do DPP first and then photoshop elements after conversion, but i didn't do that with these... and i really didn't have anything white in the pictures i guess i could have gone off of for balance in photoshop as the husbands shirt is lavender also.. hmmmm... and like i said they do NOT look orange on my screen thats the problem, they actually look fairly pale and then the prints are orange! not sure what to do!

Photoshop.

On the last one
Hue and Saturation
(select yellows)Hue = +20 Saturation = -40
(select reds ) hue = -9 saturation -18

Should be an OK start.

Then add another hue/saturation adjustment layer (don't use the same one) and adjust to overall saturation to your taste.

on this laptop screen, they look fine.

I would say its your monitor. What you could do is go to walmart or whereever and order one or two 4x6 prints from the ones you see as orange and see how they turn out. I do this even when they look fine just to be sure and to have a print copy along with the enlargements I make later after seeing how the small prints come out.

If they come out fine then there is probably something wrong at your end in the computer color. Make sure your computer and the software you are using to view/edit is the same (make sure windows and elements is both set to sRGB or whatever calibration you are using).

I tried using the color calibration from my screen once and it made everything turn yellow, so i re set it to sRGB and dont find a great difference between what i print and see on the computer (color's may not be a vivid somtimes)

IMHO get a Huey (cheaper) to adjust your monitor. They're pretty good. Or maybe a Spyder.

I actually adjusted the greens and yellows and reds saturation DOWN more on the 2nd hue/saturation adjustment layer (adjust to taste), but boosted the "master" saturation up a bit (did this second compensation to compensate for the slightly OTT green background).

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The simplest way I found was simply adding a blue filter adjustment layer. Of course I ended up taking it way to far but that's what I always do. If it's still to saturated I'd just lose some saturation the simple way. But a blue filter and playing with the density should be the quickest and relatively best looking fix for these.

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arreat i love how you softened/blurred the background.. and sharpened them up a bit.. how did you do those 2 steps??? did you gaussian blur the background? and just regular old Unsharpen mask to sharpen??

and Stealthy Ninja , the color in yours definitely shows an improvement i can see what you're saying! im gonna look at my color settings for hue/saturation for sure!!

and Brit84.. my monitor doesn't show them orange, only the prints look orange.. that's why i am trying to figure out if it was my monitor or the printer that just printed them orange?!

how do you play with the density????? I am pretty good with my photoshop skills (been doing it consistently daily for 4 yrs) but would love to know exactly what you meant by that..
Like i said it looks like you selected the background and gaussian blurred it, right? How much feathering/smoothing did you do between the background and the subjects? Also, i am always looking for the right way to sharpen my pictures.. i like how yours turned out.. help!?

OH AND THANK YOU ALL SOOOO MUCH SO FAR.. i am feeling better that its not my fault at least that the prints came out sooooo orange! i may just have to suggest to them to use a better printer if this is what walgreens is going to do.. i mean they look really orange!

LOL I just realised I messed up her hair colour (which I would bring back in using a layer mask if I were doing it myself... see about that below).

Why not adjust your white balance. You said you shot in "Auto white balance". Therefore you should be adjusting that first! (in Adobe Camera RAW).

You need to learn how to use layer masks... I'll find a tutorial.

OK so apparently "elements" doesn't have this excellent feature... but there is a way to "cheat":

http://graphicssoft.ab​out.com …lements/qt/laye​rmasks.htm

becky_us wrote in post #7940430
Thanks for the quick response!! yeah the odd thing is the prints green is not even as bright as these pics but like i said the orange is pretty bad.. they both look pretty darn tanned in the pictures... I really didn't mess with the color much in editing.. to be honest i did very little editing to these pics because i wanted to test the color comparison before i got too deep into editing.. and they do NOT look orange on my camera either??? so if i upload them to mpix.com or somewhere else.. how will i know if the coloring is going to be right with them??? will they tell me if i call and ask?? I just don't know what i can personally do to guarantee -not orange- pictures.. but you never know, they might like having a little tan I know the bride showed me her pantyhose-less legs that she fake tanned with cream for weeks, LOL

I have to remember to that i did this all for free and they were expecting just a point and shoot a few shots from my aunt.. so i am sure what i've got is going to be better than their first choice....

From what I was told, Mpix will automatically do a color adjust/management unless you do not want that service. The testimonies here say that their adjustments are outstanding.

becky_us wrote in post #7940765
arreat i love how you softened/blurred the background.. and sharpened them up a bit.. how did you do those 2 steps??? did you gaussian blur the background? and just regular old Unsharpen mask to sharpen??

and Stealthy Ninja , the color in yours definitely shows an improvement i can see what you're saying! im gonna look at my color settings for hue/saturation for sure!!

and Brit84.. my monitor doesn't show them orange, only the prints look orange.. that's why i am trying to figure out if it was my monitor or the printer that just printed them orange?!

On elements I don't think it's entirely possible. But if you ever upgrade to CS4 you can do this.

I copied the initial layer three times, followed up by doing lens blur(more natural bokeh) on one layer, then did a quick select on the background and refined the edge slightly. then created a layer mask, while the selection was active it automatically made the layer mask what I wanted allowing things in the selection to come through while things not selected remained natural. Then just repeated on the other two layers with a Hi-Pass sharpen(pretty much unsharp mask) and the layermask this time with a inverse selection before you click the layermask button. The 3rd was the most complex, being another Gaussian blur layer, then just filed the entire mask with black and went over the faces with a 20% Opacity brush on the layer mask to soften up the skin a bit since the JPEG had quite a few artifacts. Would look much better if it was RAW or a larger JPEG. Sorry for writing a book lol.

And yes Mpix does an AMAZING job for ordering prints, I used them up until recently when I started going though Millers(who mpix actually goes through) but they have minimum orders and such, so for a consumer I'd recommended Mpix endlessly.