exteme color cast

[1984]

A friend sent me this pic today, he was behind a shopping center where lots of ice falls. but the color is way off,. i did it quick and certainly blew out some colors and lost something, but it's an improvement.

Big Brother is Watching

[D-Frag]

the only thing that is bothering me is the white outline on the pick axe guy. i suggest zooming in real tight and feathering that to make sure its not so noticable. and you will really need to go in and play with each pixel on that rope, it has a white outline also. other then that I think its a valiant effort

http://img15.exs.cx/img15/7863/nufrag2nk6zq.jpg

digitalcamwhore (http://digitalcamwhore.deviantart.com/gallery/)

Thanks to vend3r (http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/profile.aspx?f=35&m=97279&p=4762) for the sig

http://img167.exs.cx/img167/9269/xtroll7ae.jpg http://img167.exs.cx/img167/9269/xtroll7ae.jpg

[beanz]

Did you use the sharpen filter on this? It kinda gives off the same feel, as if you've sharpened one or two times too many. Does that make any sense!?!

http://sighost.fuelie.org/accounts/beanz/beanz_17.jpg

http://dabeanz.deviantart.com

[1984]

Oh, no i certainly went overboard with sharpening and not paying attention to the small pixel details. This is about half the size of the original and I kinda wanted to see how it would go just messing with that one. i've never had a color cast so bad before, it's a challange for sure.

Big Brother is Watching

[Broacher]

>>i've never had a color cast so bad before, it's a challange for sure<<

So, what steps did you take to attack the correction?

[1984]

Well, i tried all normal techniques like level and curve adjustments, but couldn't get the ice right and the guy at the same time, so i eventually had to cut him out and do his layer seperatly.
After that it wasn't so hard, the thing that made it work best was a hue/saturation adjust towards blue with colorize checked. after that it was mostly levels and curves.

Hopefully soon I'll work on the real rez version and post that.

Ordinary Life is Pretty Complex Stuff

[Broacher]

Yeah, the original's blue channel WAS a throw away. You had no choice but to create a new one. I tried applying a channel from a CMYK copy into the blue, some AB curve work, and then a channel mix adjustment layer to tweak things out. I got some good greys and pretty good colour and tones in the ice-- but the figure's red and flesh tones muddied out. In a way, you're lucky that there really were only two things besides the figure to deal with-- that is, the ice and the rocks. That made the blue recolouring of the background more of a masking job of the figure and certainly doable.

Have you ever tried plate blending for stuff like this?

[1984]

plate blending....do tell..i never even heard of that?

Ordinary Life is Pretty Complex Stuff

[Broacher]

AKA channel blends. I suppose the most basic method would be using the Channel Mixer adjustment (or adj. layer), but I learned a lot more about using this technique from Dan Margulis' terrific book: 'Professional Photoshop -- the classic guide to color correction'. Dan makes extensive use of the 'Image/Apply Image' to achieve some very remarkable tweaks and optimizations WITHOUT resorting to masking selections. He tends to go for the global fixes wherever possible. And a big part of it is learning to use this with the 10 channels in every colour image (CMYK, LAB, and RGB).

If you're interested in learning more, I strongly reccommend buying the book. I've had mine for almost two years now and I STILL reach for it almost everyday (and I still have to re-read certain parts about ten times before it all sinks in!)