Matching the blue skies in multiple photos

MM
Posted By
Miranda_Maher
May 16, 2004
Views
1725
Replies
8
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Closed
Hello, I hope you can help me.

I’ve searched around, but can’t find any advice on this. Maybe what I want to do is unusual — or obvious to everyone but me. I have 10-12 photographs of flying birds that I’m printing for a gallery installation. Because the photos are taken on different days/with different film/cameras (then the film was scanned), the sky colors range from true sky blue to shades of lavender. I need them to all be the same sky blue. Any shift from monitor to paper is okay (I’m set up to deal w/that). I’m having special frames made the exact blue of the sky, so I need to be consistent.

My idea is to write down the designation of the blue that I want to use from the color-picker and then bring the other images to that blue — and deal with any cast in the birds the best I can. How can I shift to a particular color (without endless trial and error)? I know there’s a way. There’s always a way with PS. You ideas and advice are most appreciated.

Miranda Maher
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blue match multiple

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JG
John_Gregson
May 16, 2004
I’ve used the Color Match feature from Photoshop CS with tremendous success. The difficult part was selecting the sky in all three pictures. It’s under Image –> adjustment –> match color.
N
norm
May 16, 2004
Miranda, what I would do is select the photo that has the kind of sky you want throughout and make a selection of the sky (magic wand, color range, or whatever) and save it to a new layer (Ctrl J). Then Ctrl C to make a copy to the clip board. Now make selections of the sky in each of the other photos and Edit>Paste into that selection. You can use free transform (Ctrl T) to enlarge the sky if you need. Since you only have 10-12 photos, this shouldn’t take too long.

wrote in message
Hello, I hope you can help me.

I’ve searched around, but can’t find any advice on this. Maybe what I want
to do is unusual — or obvious to everyone but me. I have 10-12 photographs of flying birds that I’m printing for a gallery installation. Because the photos are taken on different days/with different film/cameras (then the film was scanned), the sky colors range from true sky blue to shades of lavender. I need them to all be the same sky blue. Any shift from monitor to paper is okay (I’m set up to deal w/that). I’m having special frames made the exact blue of the sky, so I need to be consistent.
My idea is to write down the designation of the blue that I want to use
from the color-picker and then bring the other images to that blue — and deal with any cast in the birds the best I can. How can I shift to a particular color (without endless trial and error)? I know there’s a way. There’s always a way with PS. You ideas and advice are most appreciated.
Miranda Maher
ND
Nick_Decker
May 16, 2004
Miranda, you didn’t say which PS version you’re using, but yes, Color Match or the Color Replacement Tool in PS CS might work for you. Can you post some of the pictures somewhere?

Nick
P
Phosphor
May 17, 2004
If you don’t have the latest version of Photoshop, you can try my method at the link below.

Phosphor "Matching Color Between 2 Images" 10/25/03 10:18am </cgi-bin/webx?50>
PC
Pierre_Courtejoie
May 17, 2004
There is also this tutorial by Russell Brown <http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20975.html>
TE
Thomas_Ellefson
May 17, 2004
One caveat to Phosphor’s technique: in the images you’re talking about, it sounds like the sky was probably the same shade of blue in all the original shots, just camera/angle/film differences caused different results. If that’s the case, and the sky wasn’t actually different shades on those different days, then you don’t want to make any selections at any point in the process. If the color is off in the sky, it’s off on the birds too.

tye
P
Phosphor
May 17, 2004
Good point, Tom.

Still, the technique I outline is a good one well worth learning.
S
suzwil
May 19, 2004
You can also create a color balance ADJUSTMENT LAYER,(icon at the bottom of the layers palette) which creates a mask, adjust the color of the sky to your taste, click on the MASK icon in the adjustment layer, invert the mask CTRL-I, (COMM-I for mac,)this changes the image back to the original color, then using a brush set to low opacity and WHITE in the foreground box in the toolbar, paint in the sky color, this will insure that the color of the birds remain pure. This may get a little touchy if there are really fine details like feathers but if you zoom in really close you should be able to make it work. Hope I have explained this clearly enough

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