Removing blue cast
Hi everyone,
first of all I wish you a merry Christmas and a hapy new year!
I am only a hobbiest and not very proficient in Capture One, so I apologize in advance if my question is dumb or if the answer is obvious.
I have quite a few images with a blue color cast, some with a green cast, that I would like to remove. I searched the internet and found some suggestions what to do, but I am nut sure what the recommended and most efficient way would be.
What I tried, and all if it worked at leas to some extend:
Using the color picker of the white balance tool to select a white or grey area. If I can find an appropiate spot this gives good results. In a second step I can use the white balance tool to correct the "mood" of the image. But not all images have appropiate areas, somtimes grey cloods work but white areas are more often than not really white.
Using the curve tool in to decrease the blue curve. This too works, but I struggle with finding the right amount and therefore it takes quite long. Maybe this is a lack of experience.
Using the levels tool and shift the midpoint in the blue curve.
Using the levels tool in RGB mode in "auto" mode. Sometimes, that gives very good and quick results, sometimes it results in wrong colors in other areas of the image. But it is worth a try.
I also tried to use the color tool, but this never really worked for me, probably I have to get a lot more proficient with this tool.
Another question is, if I should first correct the white balance and than the color cast or the other way arround. I always thougt it would be better to have correct colors first and than correct the white balance. But a lot of articles I read suggested to first correct the white balance.
I would appreciate any help with this problem, many thanks in advance!
Alex
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Hello Alex.
First, thanks for the Christmas greetings.
Second, I'm going to tell you what I do to deal with colour casts, but I'm an amateur too so there are high chances I'll stand corrected by other answers from people with more experience.
Generally speaking I think that dealing with the blue curve should be avoided as I think it might unbalance the overall colour look. The best thing is to try to stay with the "White balance" tool, eventually with the "Tint" control. Basically the "Kelvin" tool should be for blue/yellow casts, the "Tint" tool for the green/magenta (as the colour in the sliders reveal). I find they are very effective for the most common colour casts that I experience (blue for shadows in a clear sky day, green when shooting under the tree canopy in a bright day, etc...).
Other very specific colour casts could be addressed with the "Color balance" or even the "Color editor" tools, which give you a more precise control.
In general, take care of the cause of the cast considering that sometimes it might involve only a portion of the image (e.g. only part of the image might contain shadows in a clear sky day, while others might be directly exposed to sunlight). In this case you should go with layers and apply the correction only to the relevant parts. The "Color Balance" tool is interesting as it can apply corrections only to "shadow/midtone/highlight", that is useful when the colour cast is bound to light intensity.
In general, for the new photos to take, consider buying a "gray card". They are plastic badges with calibrated white/gray/black parts. After you take your regular photo, you take another shot including the card in the image. In this way you have an accurate reference for the color picker.
Hope this helps at least a bit.
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Hello Alex,
"Stoppingdown" gave good advice. It sounds like what you're seeing is White Balance issues. You "could" try the Auto WB magic wand, but it rarely works for my nature/wildlife/landscape images (it works pretty well for artificially lit ones, though).
Everything I've read over the years (and my own workflow) is to adjust White Balance first, then move to Exposure, then Levels, then to other adjustments. WB changes can change the histogram, as well as impacting how the exposure looks, which is why I do that first. I work the Exposure tool sliders before Levels because they change the histogram. Levels is another good tool.
I'm not proficient with the Curves tool or individual channels in Levels or Curves, so I just use Curves to adjust contrast as needed (a basic S-curve). I also like some of the Curves presets.
Lastly, when using the Color Pickers, be aware that they don't do well with tones very close to either white or black.
I hope this helps!
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Alex,
You have not said which camera system you are using and in some situations - especially with Film Simulations - that might be significant. Also I hope we are talking about RAW files rather than jpgs as the details to be discussed are likely to vary.
In general one needs to get the overall White Balance to an acceptable place and then leave it UNLESS using a Layer and a mask to specifically alter some content areas of an image later in processing.For example a scene lit by different light sources - daylight + street lamps + other artificial light perhaps - might beneoft form some local adjustments to make the overall effects more balanced as a final part of the processing.
One thing that may help is to use the Levels tool in Channel mode (Red, Green , Blue rather than RGB) since you shoud normally sees a more balanced relative adjustment of the colours, especially when using the Auto Levels Adjustment.
See the Levels tool Preferences to access the option to switch between the 2 modes.
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A big "thank you" to all of your for your help and your input, that helped me a lot!
Maybe I am "thinking to complicated", I will play arround with the white balance tool a lot more and try it on a layer as well. Probably I just nedd a few ten thousand images more experience ;)
My general workflow is the same as described here, I correct the exposure and than use the level tool to set the black and white "point". On some images I will adjust that later in the editing process a second time, but mostly not.
I am using m4/3 cameras, a Panasonic G81 and sometimes an older GX7 as well. I noticed the blue cast with booth cameras, mostly an landscape images taken at the sea or in the mountains. And I always shoot RAW&JPG, but I am editing only the RAWs. The JPGs are just for culling images before even importing them to C1, somtimes I also compare them with my edits.
Alex
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When shooting RAW and JPG do you the colour cast in both images?
If you open the RAW in Capture One and compare it to the camera processed jpg both in Capture One AND using another viewer option for the jpg - a browser maybe or photo viewer tool (preferably one with built in colour management) - how much difference can you see?
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