I've noticed in quite a few photos taken of forests and streams locally (Pacific Northwest) that the digital captures posted have a strong yellow tint in the mosses and leaves. How does one change that color to a deep green hue, a la Velvia?
Given the drop in 5d prices, I may be considering one, but I want to make sure I can easily present the vegetation as I prefer. I'm guessing, since it is a semi-professional camera that it is not geared toward the consumer-friendly production of colors so common in point and shoots.
Is there anyone out there who uses these types of color shifts and is happy with the results? Is it a trivial matter in the hands of an experienced Photoshop user or can be handled simply by fine tuning a couple of camera presets (in the 5d)?
Hue/Saturation and color adjustments in Elements 6.0 have not yielded satisfactory results, when analyzing others' images. I've heard of a couple of Velvia plug-ins but have not been very impressed with the renderings in examples I've seen.
My first couple of questions, Jay, would be - are you shooting in RAW? And can you point to any examples of what you don't consider satisfactory (or what you want to achieve)? I don't have any experience with a 5D, but to my thinking, it alone won't be much different than what you're probably currently shooting with. Then again, I don't know that I'm that attuned to very subtle color effects.
Posted by Scott Reeves on May 29, 2008 at 10:39 PM
Jay, does PS Elements 6.0 have a Selective Color adjustment layer? If so, I think you'll find that method to be more satisfactory than Hue.
Most digital photographers set their cameras to auto white-balance, which eliminates the cool blues found in overcast or shaded areas and results in a warm look. Perhaps this is the yellow tint you're referring to. The easiest solution is to set the white balance (either in-camera or in the raw converter) to achieve the desirable color balance.
There is a remarkable amount of yellow in most of the nature greens we are used to seeing. Velvia tended to hide this and we see it more with digital, which has more accurate color under good, neutral lighting. (I liked the inaccuracy of Velvia and miss it shooting digitally)
Not knowing what camera you are currently shooting, here is my experience. For the prior three years, I've been shooting the Canon 20D. Under most conditions, it got nature greens fairly correct. There are a couple of conditions, though, where the greens would be more yellow than green. Mostly, these occurred under heavy overcast days. I eventually learned to get it right in the converter, but there are still several images I never got right.
I recently purchased the 5D. I have found that the greens there are more along the lines of what I am expecting to see. Actually, I have been far happier with the overall color balance than I ever was with the 20D. I've spent a lot less time "correcting" the color balance for what I want the image to look like. Why the 5D has "better" (for me!) color, I don't know.
Whether the purchase of the 5D will provide the same answer for you, I don't know. I certainly wouldn't purchase the camera based on this story. If it does everything you need it to and the price is right for you, then get the camera. But justifying it on the possibility of better color and this post would be a mistake. Much of getting color right digitally is in Photoshop skills, not the camera, assuming that the camera is used correctly.
In post processing I have the best luck using Selective Color under Adjustments. Concentrate on the black slider in each of the color channels, most likely in your example in the green and yellow channels. You can really dial up or dial down a polarizer effect on skies by doing the same kind of adjustment in the blue and cyan channels. It's quick and easy!
You can also convert the color mode to LAB, and in Curves, adjust the a and b curves by steepening them - ie moving the endpoints of the curves inwards along the top and bottom of the chart. The a component represents the red-green axis, the b is for the blue-yellow axis. By steepening both curves by the same amount while keeping the center of the new curves exactly at the same location as the un-adjusted curves, you will intensify the colors, often resulting in better greens. When shooting in heavy overcast, or under skylight (like when a cloud passes overhead) you have a color shift that can result in more yellow, less green. Here my might want to take the center of the b curve and move it down to remove some yellow. By doing this on a layer, you can dial in the opacity and fill levels. I find that in most cases, adjusting the endpoints of both curves to an input of -100 and 100 will result in enough to give me the greens that I like. I have yet to come up with the greens that I used to see shooting Afgacrome 50, but you will be closer to Velvia. Once you have performed the curves adjustment in LAB mode, you will need to convert back to RGB so that your printer can undersand your image.
Thanks for the responses. I do shoot in RAW and currently have an entry level Nikon dslr and a 645 film camera. One poster on this site said a while back that the eye remembers vegetation to be more green than it actually is, and thus we prefer to see it rendered that way in photographs. I can't verify that statement, but it makes sense to me.
The color rendition is only one of many criteria I use in making a purchase decision, but for me color and tonality are important-- specifically, being able to adjust the yellows and greens of foliage to look more like Velvia, without spending hours on the computer, and without adjusting all colors in the process. It looks like I may have to get the full version of Photoshop or perhaps a Curves plug-in for Elements to have a shot at producing the results I desire. Unfortunately, Elements does not have a Selective Color Adjustment Layer.
Dan's comments make me wonder if such modifications are not a trivial matter. Can I post links to other people's photos from the forums? That way I could give a couple of examples of the types of photos I'm referring to.
Here is one example of a picture I took, in which I could not get the greens to come out as desired:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hikester_guy/2536962296/
OK - I think I see what you mean, now. Since you have Elements 6, I'm assuming you're using ACR in Elements as your RAW converter? If that's the case, I've recently found RAW Therapee free converter software, that has a LOT more features, including better color controls than ACR in Elements. That's one thing that might help. If you're using Capture NX or something like that I'm not sure what the functionality is.
Once into TIFF or JPG with an image like that, my first thought would be to lower the saturation on the yellows, and increase the greens - usually does the trick, but like I said, I'm not that picky. Or a curves adjustment, as you mentioned. Unfortunately, the free curves plug-in I have for Elements 4.0 isn't available for 6.0. RAW Therapee has a curves dialog that works on the RAW file that could help though.
With regards to my comments: *Usually*, getting color right is a matter of good photoshop skills and being able to understand both color and what is off with the color in the image. The few images I never got right, I could see that they were wrong, but couldn't put my finger on precisely what was wrong.
As I thought about the question afterwards, some of the off color images were in higher contrast situations (but not super high, like noon in July on a bright sunny day)
In the meantime, I have learned the LAB tricks (well worth the time, once you understand the basics of PS and understand color).
With respect to the 5D, for whatever reason, the natural color palette and white balance adjustment seems to be significantly better than my 20D. But I have seen a LOT of really good color, uncorrected, coming out of other 20D
Thanks for all of the responses. I tried desaturating the yellows and saturating the greens, and adjusting the respective hues, but the colors looked very unnatural. If/when I get full Photoshop, I'll try the Lab and channel adjustments. I see that other people have noticed a yellow shift when shooting vegetation in overcast weather, which are precisely the optimum conditions for forest and stream shots. That is what one would expect with a white balance set for cloudy, as Guy mentioned, yet, a simple white balance adjustment in raw has not yielded satisfactory results.
I mentioned the 5d initially, because I seemed to see a more pronounced effect with photos being posted shot with that camera. Of course, such observations are not scientific and do not imply cause and effect. Given my limitations creating believable color adjustments, though, I feel somewhat restricted to the output of the camera, and that's why I asked.
If anyone wants to take a crack at adjusting the colors in my photo and showing me the result, feel free.
I didn't take any pains with it or mess with the other colors, but this is quick and dirty with the black slider in the yellow and green channels on Selective Color (under Adjustments in Photoshop). 'm not surprised that elements doesn't have a Selective Color adjustment layer, but I'd be surprised if you didn't find it under Adjustments. Again, mine is quick and dirty, but that black slider on each of the channels is really handy for adjusting only one color and not affecting the others.
Hank, thanks for giving it a shot. It does look somewhat better, though a hair unnatural. On a side note, I just got back some Velvia 50 slides that showed a similar yellow hue.
Since I wasn't there I had to guess at the color. The technique lets you make your own choices with very sensitive controls. BTW, part of the "unnatural" you may be seeing is that I automatically sharpened my screen grab for the web. Bad habit sometimes, but in this case it added a fair bit to the contrast.
That's my attempt to get the too-yellow greens to look more like what I see in treebark and ferns. I selected the treebark hue, tolerance=6, and did a Hue and Saturation adjustment: made the hue 20 values (of 255) toward blue, and increased saturation by 20%. I find this thread interesting because lately I've been especially conscious of what sRGB (or any color space model) does to the colors we see. Increases the proportion of red (but how to distinguish that increase from what may be an accurate representation of red chlorophyll that I think we filter out unconsciously?), which probably accounts for the shift toward yellow, and severely limits the greens.
BTW, if Elements can't do what you want, you could try some of the suggestions here on the Gimp (open source: free); it has the controls for Curves and LAB and what's been discussed here, and from what I can tell, they're set up the way Adobe does it. The current version (2.4.5) downloads, installs, and runs without problems.
Discussion
14 repliesGiven the drop in 5d prices, I may be considering one, but I want to make sure I can easily present the vegetation as I prefer. I'm guessing, since it is a semi-professional camera that it is not geared toward the consumer-friendly production of colors so common in point and shoots.
Is there anyone out there who uses these types of color shifts and is happy with the results? Is it a trivial matter in the hands of an experienced Photoshop user or can be handled simply by fine tuning a couple of camera presets (in the 5d)?
Hue/Saturation and color adjustments in Elements 6.0 have not yielded satisfactory results, when analyzing others' images. I've heard of a couple of Velvia plug-ins but have not been very impressed with the renderings in examples I've seen.
Thanks very much.
Guy
Not knowing what camera you are currently shooting, here is my experience. For the prior three years, I've been shooting the Canon 20D. Under most conditions, it got nature greens fairly correct. There are a couple of conditions, though, where the greens would be more yellow than green. Mostly, these occurred under heavy overcast days. I eventually learned to get it right in the converter, but there are still several images I never got right.
I recently purchased the 5D. I have found that the greens there are more along the lines of what I am expecting to see. Actually, I have been far happier with the overall color balance than I ever was with the 20D. I've spent a lot less time "correcting" the color balance for what I want the image to look like. Why the 5D has "better" (for me!) color, I don't know.
Whether the purchase of the 5D will provide the same answer for you, I don't know. I certainly wouldn't purchase the camera based on this story. If it does everything you need it to and the price is right for you, then get the camera. But justifying it on the possibility of better color and this post would be a mistake. Much of getting color right digitally is in Photoshop skills, not the camera, assuming that the camera is used correctly.
The color rendition is only one of many criteria I use in making a purchase decision, but for me color and tonality are important-- specifically, being able to adjust the yellows and greens of foliage to look more like Velvia, without spending hours on the computer, and without adjusting all colors in the process. It looks like I may have to get the full version of Photoshop or perhaps a Curves plug-in for Elements to have a shot at producing the results I desire. Unfortunately, Elements does not have a Selective Color Adjustment Layer.
Dan's comments make me wonder if such modifications are not a trivial matter. Can I post links to other people's photos from the forums? That way I could give a couple of examples of the types of photos I'm referring to.
Here is one example of a picture I took, in which I could not get the greens to come out as desired:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hikester_guy/2536962296/
Once into TIFF or JPG with an image like that, my first thought would be to lower the saturation on the yellows, and increase the greens - usually does the trick, but like I said, I'm not that picky. Or a curves adjustment, as you mentioned. Unfortunately, the free curves plug-in I have for Elements 4.0 isn't available for 6.0. RAW Therapee has a curves dialog that works on the RAW file that could help though.
As I thought about the question afterwards, some of the off color images were in higher contrast situations (but not super high, like noon in July on a bright sunny day)
In the meantime, I have learned the LAB tricks (well worth the time, once you understand the basics of PS and understand color).
With respect to the 5D, for whatever reason, the natural color palette and white balance adjustment seems to be significantly better than my 20D. But I have seen a LOT of really good color, uncorrected, coming out of other 20D
I mentioned the 5d initially, because I seemed to see a more pronounced effect with photos being posted shot with that camera. Of course, such observations are not scientific and do not imply cause and effect. Given my limitations creating believable color adjustments, though, I feel somewhat restricted to the output of the camera, and that's why I asked.
If anyone wants to take a crack at adjusting the colors in my photo and showing me the result, feel free.
BTW, if Elements can't do what you want, you could try some of the suggestions here on the Gimp (open source: free); it has the controls for Curves and LAB and what's been discussed here, and from what I can tell, they're set up the way Adobe does it. The current version (2.4.5) downloads, installs, and runs without problems.