Lady Artist At Work

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Originally Posted by deetheturk

Nice image Raj,but i agree with both Manfred and Mike,Manfred's edit looks spot on!

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thanks for the kind review. :) M working again on the colors :)

Okay - good; you are working in Photoshop, let me walk you through my workflow on this one. I am using Photoshop CC.

If you are shooting in camera RAW, it will be easier, but I only had access to your images as a jpeg, so the white balance would have been "baked" into the image.

First of all, what strikes me right away is that the image looks like it was taken using daylight setting under tungsten light. That heavy orange cast is typically seen when this is done. Even if you are shooting RAW, if this is how your camera is set up, the data in the sidecar file will open the file this way in Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) on import.

I did all of my adjustment in ACR:

1. Correct the white balance; I used the eyedropper tool on something that I thought was likely white in the image to set the white balance. All of the framed images in the background look like they had a white matt, so I picked one of these to set my white balance. If they are not white, I will have introduced a slightly incorrect bias into things.

2. The next step is to set the black point and white point. Not all images have parts that are pure black and pure white, but this one seems to and when I look at the histogram, the range seems to be a bit compressed, so I opened things up by taking the black slider to the left to a point just about where you start to block the shadow details (in this image it was already there) and move the white slider to the right to just before you start to blow out highlights. This will give the image more "pop".

3. I will normally also play with the clarity and vibrance and bring them up a bit; never more than 20 or 25 when there is a person in the image. I did not do this in this shot.

4. At this point, I took the saturation slider and moved it to the left until the woman's skin looked correct.

After that I opened in Photoshop and really did nothing else. If it were my image, I probably would have done a slight vignette at this point and a bit more PP work.

I hope that this helps.

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Originally Posted by GrumpyDiver

Okay - good; you are working in Photoshop, let me walk you through my workflow on this one. I am using Photoshop CC.

If you are shooting in camera RAW, it will be easier, but I only had access to your images as a jpeg, so the white balance would have been "baked" into the image.

First of all, what strikes me right away is that the image looks like it was taken using daylight setting under tungsten light. That heavy orange cast is typically seen when this is done. Even if you are shooting RAW, if this is how your camera is set up, the data in the sidecar file will open the file this way in Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) on import.

I did all of my adjustment in ACR:

1. Correct the white balance; I used the eyedropper tool on something that I thought was likely white in the image to set the white balance. All of the framed images in the background look like they had a white matt, so I picked one of these to set my white balance. If they are not white, I will have introduced a slightly incorrect bias into things.

2. The next step is to set the black point and white point. Not all images have parts that are pure black and pure white, but this one seems to and when I look at the histogram, the range seems to be a bit compressed, so I opened things up by taking the black slider to the left to a point just about where you start to block the shadow details (in this image it was already there) and move the white slider to the right to just before you start to blow out highlights. This will give the image more "pop".

3. I will normally also play with the clarity and vibrance and bring them up a bit; never more than 20 or 25 when there is a person in the image. I did not do this in this shot.

4. At this point, I took the saturation slider and moved it to the left until the woman's skin looked correct.

After that I opened in Photoshop and really did nothing else. If it were my image, I probably would have done a slight vignette at this point and a bit more PP work.

I hope that this helps.

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thanks a lot sir for the detailed explanation of the workflow. Really appreciated and helped a lot.

Just checked my psd for the layers in Photoshop for this image after reading your explanation. I must admit its my stupidity that i missed to correct "White Balance" in Photoshop. :(

Will keep it in mind for the future :)

Raj - white balance (if you are shooting RAW) should be corrected during the RAW conversion process. Doing it in Photoshop is too late as the colour temperature setting / white balance will be "baked" into the imported file and even though you can get some level of correction, it will never be as accurate as a clean conversion from the RAW data.

That being said; removing your colour casts should be your first step as unless you are starting with a good base, you won't be able to properly judge the impact all of the other post processing you do.

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Originally Posted by GrumpyDiver

Raj - white balance (if you are shooting RAW) should be corrected during the RAW conversion process. Doing it in Photoshop is too late as the colour temperature setting / white balance will be "baked" into the imported file and even though you can get some level of correction, it will never be as accurate as a clean conversion from the RAW data.

That being said; removing your colour casts should be your first step as unless you are starting with a good base, you won't be able to properly judge the impact all of the other post processing you do.

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Yup, I always shoot in raw. Thanks for the wonderful tip for Color Temperture / White Balance. I always did this mistake for correcting white balance in the photoshop (it is my first step too but in photoshop). From now on i will use lightroom ( I manage my files using lightroom) for correcting white balance. :) thanks a ton. :)

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Originally Posted by GrumpyDiver

Raj - white balance (if you are shooting RAW) should be corrected during the RAW conversion process.

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I just want to reiterate the importance of that. Actually, I think it should be the very first thing that is done after opening the file. That's because the white balance is so fundamental that it affects the histogram if even only a little.

great photo!

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Originally Posted by Mike Buckley

I just want to reiterate the importance of that. Actually, I think it should be the very first thing that is done after opening the file. That's because the white balance is so fundamental that it affects the histogram if even only a little.

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Thanks a lot for sharing such wonderful knowledge about white balance in workflow. I will surely keep that in my mind. :)

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Originally Posted by dedro

great photo!

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Thanks a lot for the review and the appreciation. :)