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Argh! Enough with the yellow!

Aug 24, 2006

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    1. I'm having a bit of a problem with my dolls. ...OK, two of them. Specifically Remus and Ephram.

      Part of the problem is the horrid lighting I have to work with. Lousy incandescents that are all half-burned out because the wiring in this house is apparently iffy since I've blown half a dozen since we moved here turning on the lights. >_<; So it is with all indoor settings, really. Yellow cast to pictures. I can deal with it usually, slap some colour correction on it, except we get to the problem children. Actually, it's a problem that occurs in sunlight too, with these two.

      Remus and Ephram are in and of themselves yellow. X_x; Remus' wig is a gold/blonde mix, he also wears gold glasses and a brown t-shirt with yellow undertones to the brown. Ephram's hair is a brilliant gold colour that fades to true bright yellow at the ends... And colour correcting later washes THEM out! Taking out the yellow tone enough to make their skin look normal makes their hair and Remus' clothing look dull and washed out and ew.

      Is there anything at all I can do with settings on my camera to compensate for these two? I finally managed to find the actual settings on my camera tonight poking around, but I'm not sure what I'd need to actually do with them. It's a Sony CyberShot model # DSC-P8. Kind of old and crappy. It'd be nice to have to do a minimum of processing since the processing is where the real trouble is coming in. >.<

      Or some kind of lighting you'd recommend so I can take pictures inside without the lighting and flash contributing to the yellow? I can't do it outside often because of my work schedule, my allergies and the fact that everything here in the mountains is either too hilly to maintain a doll and me balanced somewhere or covered in dirt/unidenifiable insects. >_>; I don't have room for any kind of fancy setup and can't work near a window due to the layout of furniture/windows and my schedule. (I wake up during the worst time of the day for it and I'm gone until nearly midnight.) I'd actually be OK trying to deal with the blah lighting situation here if it weren't for these two brats. Alisa and Lukas never develop jaundice in photos! >_<;

      Failing toning down the crazy yellow cast these two create during the picture taking, is there a way without going psycho with the selection tool and/or layer masks of fixing the yellow cast without making them look washed out and desaturated and like they're going grey? >_<;;;

      (I need to start using PS more for my editing rather than PSP, too, but PS6 has no browse function and I hate PS7's brush engine too much)

      Here's an example of what I mean, which is better than usual because it was taken at someone else's house, heh(Flash was used):

      [​IMG]
      Image with no colour correction. (It is cropped and resized though so I guess the filename is wrong, but meh.) His skin is all @.x

      [​IMG]
      Image touched up in PSP until I got the skintone to the kind of point I want it. (I'm very biased towards cool colours, by the way, which might be part of my problem, I don't care much for warm but it's unavoidable with Remus and Ephram) Except the hair by now is terrible and so is the shirt.

      [​IMG]
      (I have no clue why what should be the same relative quality in PS as PSP for a .jpg is so much bigger in PS. Save for web my butt. X3) Image touched up in PS to a... Tolerable point? His skin's still too yellow for me, though.

      And here's a non-flash picture of Ephram using natural lighting:
      [​IMG]
      It's actually indoors, heh, it was taken near the bottom of the staircase at the Volks mansion during the teaparty, but enough light was coming in from the doors that I didn't need flash... This was corrected a bit, but he's still yellow. >_<;

      I've gotten fed up with my pictures always being terrible, and these two have really driven me over the edge! I have no clue how to deal with them at all. >_<;;; Even pictures like the one of Ephram there that are otherwise decent get ruined by the obnoxious yellow these two turn themselves. >_<;;;

      Help? (No I will not change their haircolour! XD As tempting as it is sometimes...)
       
      #1 Ian-KunX, Aug 24, 2006
      Last edited by a moderator: May 8, 2018
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    2. To be honest, the colors in the backgrounds look really nice and clear...no yellow undertones at all. I'd think if this was a problem with the enviornment and lighting, or the camera, these parts would also seem yellow.
      Also, you have to keep in mind about surrounding colors and the like. A dominant color in a picture is going to effect other colors, and especially effect neutral colors, like skin for example. In your mentioned pictures, yes, your doll's wigs are a definate dominant factor and color. They're a beautiful and bright color, yes, but your doll's skin is absorbing the color.
      I understand you don't want to switch the wigs. Honestly, who'd want to change that anyway? It suits the dolls. Instead, maybe try changing the clothing? Instead of tans and light browns, try going for darker browns, greens, or blues?
      Try to use these colors in the backgrounds as well. If there is a good complementary color in the majority of the picture, it might mute out the color of the wig a bit, and perhaps enough that the skin doesn't look so yellow.
      If it's still too yellow for your liking, try just messing with the Hue, Saturation, and lightness on photoshop, and the color levels...

      OH! Also see if you can play around with exposure on your camera. Upping the exposure will let more light in, and make the picture a bit more....well...white. :D
       
      #2 Niteshadepromise, Aug 24, 2006
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    3. On page 47 of the Cybershot DSC-P8 manual on the Sony website, there's an explanation of how to use the White Balance. Have you tried that?
       
      #3 Jinnayah, Aug 25, 2006
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    4. I learned this in graphic design before I *ahem* dropped out, and this is what I do to correct select areas of my photos:

      1)In Photoshop CS, I use the polygonal lasso tool, and select the area I wish to change the colour of. Try to stay as close to the edge as possible.
      2) Go to Select > Feather, and make sure the number is set to 5 or less. 5 if the image is high resolution, and lower if your image is small.
      3) Go to Image > Adjustments > Selective Colour, and choose "Yellow" (I usually fiddle with all of the colour ranges though, just to see how it looks. You can always set it back to zero) Now, you can remove the yellow just from that select area, and keep whatever you want to stay yellow alone.

      Tip - to add to pre-selected areas, click the second shape from the right, it looks like 2 squares merging, and says "add to selection" when you hover over it with your mouse. If, for instance, you need to go around hairs on your doll's face, etc. Also, the shape next to the "add to selection" choice, is the "subtract from selection" choice, and that is useful aswell.

      Hope that helped some! I'm sorry if you don't have Photoshop CS, but that's the only program I've ever used, and I hope it's somewhat similar...
       
      #4 poots-kin, Aug 25, 2006
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    5. 1) Use the White Balance setting on your camera.
      2) Learn to use adjustment layers in PS or PSP. Look them up in the tutorial sections, and play away!

      (Oh, the reason your PS images are twice the size, is .. you haven't adjusted the "quality" level in the Save JPG dialogue)
       
      #5 marc, Sep 11, 2006
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    6. Hi Ian-Kunx,
      I have two meager suggestions, both easy. ^_^
      1) Swap out any bulbs in the area with Phillip's "Reveal" bulbs - they're awesome! and
      B) look at your nearest window, and see if you have blinds hanging in them. I'm sorry I am absolutely horrid at remembering where I read things, but somewhere I read- if you shoot indoor pics with blinds in the windows, you'll almost always have a yellowish cast to your prints.

      OK, that's all from me. ^_^

      Blessings,
      Nanette (in so Cal) ^_^
      <><
       
      #6 SammysGrammy, Sep 11, 2006
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    7. Everything they said above, and Niteshadepromise is right - your DSC-P8 camera is described as having the capabiity of manual white balancing and has a setting called "Incandescent". Try setting it to incandescent when shooting in yellowish indoor light.

      Carolyn
       
      #7 Carolyn.S, Sep 12, 2006
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    8. I kind of think that your untouched picture looked perfectly fine too. It could also possibly be a monitor colour matter. Have you seen the untouched pictures on other computer screens, just to be sure?

      And I have a Canon Powershot. Everything looks much brighter on the camera screen. Could that have affected how you see it as well?
       
      #8 hyschara, Sep 12, 2006
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    9. OMG, don't start worrying about monitor gamma. I once read an article about colour sampling devices that you attach to a monitor to provide accuarate colour reproduction. They only cost about $300 each!!!!! How serious about photography do you have to be to spend $300 getting your monitor right?

      If you want to scare yourself about monitor colours, try reading the help files in Photoshop about "colour profiles". It's the software equivalent of "here be dragons", as far as I'm concerned.
       
      #9 marc, Sep 14, 2006
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