This exercise is about optimising colour as part of the processing the image.
For this exercise I selected some images that I shot earlier this summer: one is indoor with mixed artificial and natural lighting and the other image is outdoor, taken late in the evening with a combination of low level natural light and street light. As with the previous exercise, I shot Raw and Jpeg image for comparison.
For this exercise I used Adobe Photoshop to process my Jpeg image and I used Camera Raw to open and process my raw image.
The main stages of my image processing workflow described in Exercise 1 were used to complete this exercise; the summary of the steps are included below as well as the images to demonstrate these steps.
Raw image editing in Camera Raw/ Adobe Photoshop
Opened Photoshop: File-Open to open the file
Camera Raw opens.
Picture 1 Original image in Camera Raw
I then tried various available white balance settings. The most natural and realistic were daylight, cloudy and shade.
Picture 2 Shade white balance setting
I adjusted Tone Curve, Hue, Luminosity and Saturation levels, finally I darkened the edges and corners of the image using Post Crop Vignetting.
Before I started working on the image, I carefully examined it and selected a number of reference points, including some neutral grey and white. Throughout the adjustments I have been checking these reference points for any visible colour cast. In particular, I checked how white the white walls of the houses are on the left hand side and whether the grey harbour wall displays any sign of a colour cast.
On closer examination I noticed that the white wall of the house to the left still retains a slight magenta/ purple colour cast. I adjusted the levels of HSL tool to reduce the purple and magenta levels.
Picture 4 Magenta and purple levels adjusted
I will continue working on this file in Adobe Photoshop, e.g. remove dust specks and hair. However, this work is not part of this exercise.
Picture 5 File opened in Adobe Photoshop for editing
