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How to make only white parts a certain color?

Alain Decamps
Hi

When shooting sports I often have somebody with a white T-shirt or white hair in the public that really stands out.

At present I darken (and flatten) the public whit a local curve that has a bigger impact on the lighter parts.
For white this gives very fast a nasty grey.

Is there a way in CO to:

Within a local adjustment layer change only white to for example Caucasian skin tone. Those darken far better and blend in the public.


Alain
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Comments

7 comments

Date Votes
  • SFA
    Hmm.

    If the white is not blown out completely you could try a local adjustment with WB and/or Curves adjustment. It could work for some images.

    I assume Clone is not an option?


    Grant
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  • Alain Decamps
    Grant

    A quick note : It has to be quick. I don't have the time to select the white parts precise separately, I would paint the surrounding parts also. It should be painting of an adjustment layer where I can go wider with a soft brush.
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  • TobyHawkins
    I'm afraid this isn't quite answering what you asked, but faster than any way I know in capture one, I would export to photoshop, create a quick HSL luminosity mask (using an extension like lumenzia this takes about two button presses), then save and return to editing in capture one; whole process should take under a minute.

    Only using capture one, my solution would probably be to use auto masking, depending on the photo and how close the crowd is.
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  • Alain Decamps
    In another way formulated :

    I want to be able to assign a "colour" to neutral highlights (aka white or very light grey) in an adjustment layer, where I want the settings to be copied from image to image and the mask image specific. I didn't find a way to do that with the colour tools, but I don't know them that good.

    It has to be fast and in Capture one, I often have 50-100 images on one game with public. I can do it in picture window pro, but that's an extra step and slows things down
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  • SFA
    Alain,

    In concept this sounds like using the colour picker in the colour editor and then creating a mask using the chosen colour.

    However you cannot copy the mask for image to image and in any case at the pixel by pixel level it would probably not be very appropriate to do so unless your subject matter was static - which sports events are not, usually, in my experience.

    A secondary problem here is that white have almost no colour to select and so the effect is weak at best.

    Grey, light or otherwise, consists of all colours ... so there is a good chance that everything would be effected to some extent.

    If you were try to amend a real colour - skin tone for example or a sky - then the Skin tone adjustment in the Colour Editor might be the way to do exactly what you want - but it needs some existing colour to work with.

    There may be some clever way to invert that selection process but to do so may not satisfy your need for speed.

    I fully understand your requirement. I often shoot sports events myself and I know the type of problem. I have not identified a reliable "mass correction" approach although for a sequence if nearly similar images fixing one, copying the fixes to the rest and then making minor changes can work when the situation is "right" for such an approach. That usually means a sequence taken at 10fps and no panning.

    I know of one application that allows adjustments to be easily restricted to specific parts of the colour range and exposure and that can be tweaked to force whites to be colourful, sort of, but it's not a quick or consistent process to do so. Much trial and error involved due to even small differences in the "white" or grey giving quite different results.


    HTH.


    Grant
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  • Alain Decamps
    Grant

    I tested something more like a layer with a much higher K value (to make the painted area warmer) and then paint the white parts. Unfortunately that's not enough and need rather careful painting.

    moving the highlight white parts to skin tone would be much easier.

    Alain
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  • peter Frings
    With the color editor, you can drag the endpoints of the range to make it a full circle (well, almost), and then reduce the size of the circle to limit the range to the highlights only. You can then try to adjust the hue, saturation and lightness to get some tint in it. But, as Grant already mentioned, it's hard to grab some color on very light areas. It might help to change to color temperature to add some color.

    So, you can make an adjustment layer that adjusts the following
    - color temperature. shift in direction of color editor sample point.
    - if needed, highlights or exposure
    - a full-circle color editor (advanced or skin tones)
    - NO mask,
    You can copy and apply it to other images (you can have other layers, but they will all be copied). You can even save it as a preset.

    You would have then to paint in the areas you want to color. If it needs to be quick, then you have to be very careful with the amounts of adjustments in the layer or it will be very noticeable. But if they're too small, you will have little effect.

    The following very bad picture shows the effects of such a layer on an almost blown-out figure (note the RGB read-out; the cursor was on the left part of the left image). I've deliberately painted a very sloppy mask so you can see the effects of the spil. The ‘foot’ of the figure is not masked, only from the chest up.



    It's not perfect, but maybe it's good enough?

    HTH,
    Peter.
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