Getting the colors right

[H@rry]

<rant>

I'm having a lot of trouble on some coral getting the color right. For instance, a olive green comes out with a little reddish tint to it. Some of the blues tend to go toward purple. I tried to shoot in RAW format but that's no better.

I'm post processing with Gimp, IrfanView, ufraw. I've been moving the sliders and curves till I'm somewhat frustrated. Seems like everything I do to alter the color makes it look worse although the color does change.

Can someone point me to a tutorial that deals specifically with post processing of coral?

</rant>

 

[MCary]

Raw is never going to be better. Raw needs to be post processed to fix diffiucult lighting. Colors are easy to fix in PS once you know the program, but i don't know that much about your software.

 

[luisgo]

Harry I use Photoshop for post processing but with Gimp you can get the right colors by playing with the color - color balance selection. Just play with the sliders until you get the desired colors.

Post a photo and I can play with gimp to show you.

 

[H@rry]

luisgo - I would appreciate all the help you can give me. Here are a couple of pics I just took; one of an olive green mille and the other a blue acro. Here's the pics right out of the camera.

<img src="http://stock4today.com/frags/windsong_1.jpg">
<img src="http://stock4today.com/frags/harry_kari_1.jpg">

As you will notice the mille is not green at all and the acro appears to have a more reddish/purple tint on the body. I used the Filter Pack function of GIMP to get these results.

<img src="http://stock4today.com/frags/windsong_2.jpg">
<img src="http://stock4today.com/frags/harry_kari_2.jpg">

They are not exactly as the eye sees them in the tank but they are better. I think the camera is seeing more red than it should. I wish I could learn why the camera does not see the colors correctly.

 

[drparker]

Your eye is incredible at using the correct white balance and can constantly change it for what your focused on. Your camera knows a limited amount of preset white balances, like cloudy, shade, fluorescent etc. None of the presets are correct for the type of lights we use over our tanks.

If you shoot in jpg then the camera applies one of it's presets and adjusts the colors of the photo before saving the file. In the process of saving the jpg it compress it throwing away a lot of data it originally captured.

If you shoot raw the WB settings are not made before saving and no data is thrown away. When you bring into a raw converter you then set what white balance to use and can change or adjust it as many times as you want without the changes being destructive to the photo. Changes made to jpg are destructive.

When you first import a raw file it uses the settings the camera would have applied to the jpg, usually called "as Shot" Play with the white balance sliders until you get it looking the way you want.

Even though raw files are larger and require post they do give you much more options on post processing and allow more changes without destroying the photo.

 

[roxy25]

I had a hard time just downloading the right program to open up my raw files with CS. I finally did it and I think fixing and apply the right color balance is fun so far. I also love the options

I will post a few in my own thread.

 

[luisgo]

Harry, the first thing I see in your photos is a lot of squares. If you magnify the photo they are more evident.

Looking at the data in your photo I see that they are very small files, around 30kb. I think there is a problem with the way you are compressing the photos. I see that your photos are at 72dpi. There are many stories that that is the maximum your monitor will see. That is not true. Dpi refers to printing quality and not how they look n the monitor. I always use higher dpi of 300.

The other thing is that SPS corals don't move. You can use larger apertures with longer exposures to have a better depth of field. You will need a tripod for this. Set the aperture at f11 (you are using f5.6) and let the camera look for the speed.

Its difficult to adjust the colors without seen the correct colors of the coral. I think that the last two photos are a lot better in colors after fixing.