Reds Two Ways
Reds are among the hardest colors to both photograph and post-process. My friend has been begging me to get her some deep red photos for her living room wall, and I realized that my supply is sorely lacking. Since it’s the very end of the flower season here, I decided to try my hand at the pinkish-red flowers I found at the local farmer’s market and see if I could make them bold reds in post-processing.
It turns out that there were two ways of achieving this goal. The interesting thing to me was just how different those ways were. I’ve included the steps of both ways here, side-by-side and step-by-step. Each step builds on the previous one, so while “white balance” is first, “color calibration” includes both the changes noted and the respective white balance edits.
Here’s the original photo for reference:
Now to the fun stuff!
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White Balance Temp: 5571 Tint: +4
Moved slightly more to the blue temp and a tiny bit toward magenta |
White Balance Temp: 2952 Tint: -89
Moved a LOT toward blue temp and quite a bit toward green tint |
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Camera Calibration Shadows +100
Red Hue:-100 Red Sat:+100 Green Hue: +5 Green Sat: -100 Blue Hue:+29 Blue Sat:-100 |
Camera Calibration Shadows +8
Red Hue:-100 Red Sat:+64 Green Hue:+36 Green Sat: -86 Blue Hue:-48 Blue Sat:-98 |
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Basic Tone Exposure: 0 Brightness:-28 Contrast:+100 Vibrance:-45 Saturation:+21
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Basic Tone Exposure:+.75 Brightness:+.57 Contrast: +25 Vibrance:+60 Saturation:-48 |
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Curves Highlights:+100 Lights:+100 Darks:+100 Shadows:+26 |
Curves: Hightlights:-100 Lights:+45 Darks:+21 Shadows:-31 |
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Colors: Flower is mostly red. Red hue toward orange, slightly desaturated, luminance to +100. Others desaturated. |
Colors: Flower is mostly magenta. Magenta set toward red, saturation +17, luminance -71 Other colors mostly desaturated. |
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Split Toning, Vignetting, Localized brush added.
Vignetting set very close to max. |
Split Toning, Vignetting, Localized brush added.
Vignetting only set to about half. |
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Final Version |
If we increase the luminance of the magenta color (the color of the flower) to +100, we replicate the look of the left version. |
November 1st, 20092:05 pm at
Have you ever used white or grey cards for helping in such situations?
November 3rd, 20092:36 pm at
Great colors and a very nice photo! Your PP work is excellent as usual and your tutorials a delight to follow even for a non-Lightroom user. I just wish my laptop had 2GB RAM so I could run Lightroom 3. I planned a new computer for this winter anyway, but now I don’t know if I can afford it since you just said that I need both the DFA 100 and the DA 35 Ltd ;-)
/Tommy