Harmonizing Colour Grading Across Multiple Photos

I am trying to figure out a workflow that will let me match the colour pallet of one photo to a series of others.

That is, I'm trying to get a number of other photos have the same "look" as the reference image.

For example, the blues in the reference photo are washed out and tend to grey. I'd like the blues in the other photos to match.

Now it seems that if I had edited the reference image in C1 I could create a style from those edits and apply that to the other photos but the reference image was not created in C1.

I can use, say, the Colour Editor to shift things around, but that is a bother as while I can do a colour pick in the photo being modified, I can't force the resultant colour. Meaning, it would be very good if I could do the colour pick in the photo to be modified and then pick from the reference image the colour I want that to be shifted to.

Same holds for the Colour Balance tool. I can't force, for example, the midtones in the photo to be modified to match the midtones in the reference image.

If I could create an ICC profile from the reference photo, maybe that could be applied to the othersâ€"in essence creating a colour pallet from the reference photo and remapping the colours in the others by applying that profile.

Any thoughts on how to pull this off in C1?

Many thanks.

C1 v12.02 on macOS.
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cdc

March 14, 2019 21:07

The normalize tool is made specifically for matching white balance and exposure between multiple images. You'll take a sample form one image and apply it to another. Though it will make global changes so all colors and exposure will shift so it may or may not be what you are looking for. Nonetheless I'd suggest to give it a spin.

Otherwise you just going to have to match by eye or by the numbers.

SFA

March 14, 2019 22:16

I would suggest the same as cdc - check out the Normalize tool to see if it offers something.

However when you are starting with two differently developed images there is a good chance that the colour values of each will have been to very differently processed that you will be for ever attempting to colour match if you are going after all of the colours in the image.

You may find that processing the C1 original file (assuming it is a RAW file) with a Linear curve as the starting point may help. Then set matching white point and black point after which perhaps use curves to match the curves for each colour between the images. White balance may come into that somewhere.

Doing the work on the second image in C1 using the same colour profile as the first image would probably make sense - for matching if not for outright colour quality.

I would guess a specialist photo retoucher would offer the most useful advice.

Grant

NN635628544719171816UL

March 15, 2019 17:55

Thanks folks. I'll give it a try and report back.

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