Gordon Pembury wrote:
Thank you for a smart arse rersponse!
I know a fair bit about colour adjustment, thanks. The question is, is there a simple way akin to adjustiung whaite balance in RAW for non RAW pictures
"Clyde" wrote in message
Gordon Pembury wrote:
When I shoot RAW I can adjust white balance after I have taken the shot.
Is there an equivalent way of doing that for a JPEG? E.g. by a curves levels or hue/sat type of adjustment. (I know I can adjust the WB in camera before I take the shot, it’s after I’m interested in )
Any help gratefully received
Gordon
Yes, of course. It’s called color adjusting; one of the basic functions of Photoshop. There are many ways of doing that in Photoshop. Pick up a beginning book on Photoshop or do some hunting on the Web.
Clyde
Yeah, sorry about that. Every now and then I get tired of stupid questions in here where the asker obviously hasn’t tried much in Photoshop. Your question seemed to be asking how you could open up JPEG files in ACR. It doesn’t take much trial to learn that you can’t.
I use the CurveMeister plugin to do color correction of all kinds. I even use it to fix "white balance" after opening up a file with ACR. The reason is that it does a better job and does it faster.
I don’t spend a lot of time adjusting colors in ACR. I usually just get the histogram in range and get the color close. For me the automatic settings in CS2’s ACR will pull the histogram in so all the colors are workable. I often manually bump up the saturation a tad. If the color isn’t very close, I’ll play with the presets to see if "Auto" or "daylight" or "Flash" or whatever is better than "As Shot". On occasion
I will use the "White Balance" tool to select a neutral spot in the picture.
So, my process is pretty quick in ACR. As a wedding photographer, I can’t afford to spend too much time. I’m looking for more speed AND better quality.
When I get the picture into CS2 (RAW or JPEG or whatever) the first thing I do is correct the color. I open up the CurveMeister plugin. The basic process is very simple and very fast. I click on the Highlight tool and click on a spot that I think is the highlight. Then I move it. Moving it shows me where the true highlight is in the picture. ACR doesn’t do that speedy little step. Then I do the same with the shadow tool. The last step is to click on the Neutral tool and click on a spot in the picture that I think I neutral. That changes the preview color.
If the overall cast is correct, I’m done. If it isn’t and the picture actually has a neutral in it, I move the neutral point around until I find the best neutral. Usually I’m just watching the overall cast in the preview. When it gets to where I want it, I stop.
For me this is a fast, easy, and accurate way of setting the color cast. Actually the color cast is set with the neutral button. The highlight and shadow button stretch the histogram out to their max.
Besides that speed and accuracy, CurveMeister gives me much more power than that. What I really like are the skin pins. Sometimes the neutral spot in my picture isn’t in the same light as the person’s skin. So setting the while balance on that leaves an odd cast on the person’s skin. I can leave the neutral anchor where it was and pin the person’s skin tone. It sound complicated, but it is as simple as dragging one of the 9 skin tone pins to the person’s skin in the picture. I then move it around until I get the tone I want.
This method gives me "white balance" or color correction in multiple places in the picture. That can be very powerful. Once I start playing with multiple anchors, it does take a little bit more time. If you watch the curve while you are doing this, you can get some very interesting shapes with multiple anchors. You have to watch what gets corrected and what gets worse.
CurveMeister does for me what I think you are looking for. For me it’s faster and better than ACR. It works with any type of file. If there are good competitors to CurveMeister, I don’t know. I bought this because I was used to using Curves in Photoshop; it was an easy step. I recommend it and I’m not in Mike Russell’s pocket in any way. I’ve enjoyed my electronic communication with him and think he’s a good guy with a great product, but all the money has gone his direction.
Thanks,
Clyde