I am having a weird problem with PE and the files from my Canon s400. When I adjust levels to get a good color on an outdoor photo, the sky is always impossibly, ridiculously blue, like I was overusing a polarizing filter, or like some older books you see where the printer evidently believed there was no such thing as oversaturated color.
Does anyone know what I can do to fix this, outside of cutting out the sky and adjusting that separately every time?
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Barbara, how are you adjusting levels? Are you using the RGB composite or adjusting each channel separately? You may want to try tweaking the blue channel separately, although too much of that can create a color cast. The other idea is to add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, then reduce the saturation of the blues by selecting them in the Edit box.
‘Morning, Pete and Chuck. It’s not just the blue channel, it’s all of them. I have to mess with each individually and then desaturate to get back to anything remotely realistic.
If I do it for the whole photo, the rest of it looks like hell, so I have to select out the sky, yadayadayada.
The superblue skies are very pretty, of course, but I’m beginning to think this camera was tweaked to give nice skies to northerners shooting on dreary gray days.
It’s not a white point thing, I don’t think, because if I shoot, say, blue plumbago, the color for that is fine.
If your camera is capable of doing this; Meter something low that is not affected by the sky when taking the picture. Some cameras can "hold" that meter reading if you hold the shutter button half way down. (Guess if you can try another metering the sky too and see what works best)
These photos were taken with a Canon S400. I like blue skies and usually increase the blue saturation slightly. Don’t the skies look pretty natural to you (not speaking of the sunrise)? A little emphasis doesn’t hurt?! http://www.concentric.net/~jdirrigl/ThisThat/
PETE, Don’t know if "Florida Blue Skies" is something to brag about. If I remember some of my geography, the blue is from polution and a white sky is the clearest. Oh well, who cares….the blue is prettiest anyway. Marty
I have got some brilliantly blue skys from both my S30 and S50. Looking at them it seems that they are ‘bluer’ when ther are little or no clouds in the sky and the sun is more behind.
Here’s <http://members.aol.com/bkbrun/northview.jpg> an example. If I tone it down, the sand becomes dull and the foliage colors are wrong, but this was actually a slightly overcast day.
Barbara, FWIW…on my monitor, the sky looks nearly perfect – maybe a little on the purple side near the horizon on the right, but that’s a lot of miles of air absorbing red light before it gets to your camera….
Chuck, I agree it’s very pretty, but the sky that day was actually kind of zinc-colored. (I’m not worried about the purple in this particular photo, since it was taken at mid-day).
Well, Barbara, I’d say you have a magic camera! I’ve tried all kinds of gimmicks to replace a sky that comes out too light and colorless, and it’s really tough to make it look convincing. But I know….you want the camera to capture what you really see, not what you might want to see.
Barbara, I found that selecting the sky in your image and adding a hue/saturation adjustment layer with approximately -19 saturation and +27 lightness made the sky less prominent. I also tried Auto Color Correction (PE2 feature) and it made the sky even bluer!
I know I can fix the sky by selecting it separately, but it’s a pain to have to do that every time. I was hoping/wondering if there some fix for the lazy person.
Barbara, have you tried playing with the white balance? Maybe Auto doesn’t work well for this kind of shot. You have a bunch of choices of WB setting on your s400, including Custom. Might be worth experimenting a bit.
I find that if I move the white balance the sky is better but I get a color cast on the rest of the pic, and removing that puts me back in the cerulean realm again.
Hello Barbara. I tried adjusting the sky by using a gradient pattern on the upper part of the photo only. http://www.pbase.com/myeyesview/for_barbra I posted your photo and the one I worked on for comparison. This seems to be an easy way to correct sky exposure problems of any type. See what you think.
I did this quickly and didn’t play with the gradient or the opacity any. Mine is a tad too light but I think you get the idea I am trying to convey. It is a very easy way to adjust sky without making it look unnatural or causing problems with the rest of the photo.
Barbara, You shouldn’t have to go to all the suggested troubles in order to get a properly colored photo. I would suggest that you put a message on a newsgroup such as "rec.photo.digital" to see if others are having similar problems with their Canon s400’s. If not, you might contact Canon directly to see what they say, or take the camera back to where you bought it for repair or resetting. It could be that an internal setting is off as someone else has suggested.
By any chance does your camera have a setting called "Vivid Color" under Color Mode? Mine does and if yours does as well, maybe you have it set on that. Just a thought.
Does your camera has anything like "Auto White Balance?" If so, try to defeat it and chose the setting yourself. White balance gets confused at times and produces odd results. Look at page 73 of the user guide.
If this fails, check on page 74 for setting your own white balance. This is, by far, the best way to go. But not everybody carries a big piece of perfectly white material (cardboard) to balance the colours of her/his camera.
I would post this issue on the dpreview’s canon forum. You’ll find a lot more S400 users there. I’m wondering if it is a Canon thing. I remember reading that Canon’s love blue. I took that to mean that they render it well, but sounds like your Canon loves it too much. Because I prefer a blue sky so much, I may not have noticed the misrepresentation with both of my digital Canons. And because I live in Seattle I’ll take the blue anytime, real or not. Looking at that beach shot, I couldn’t help feeling a little envy, especially as today is a gloomy Northwest day. 🙁
Hi, Barb. Not exactly that setting but the nearest equivalent doesn’t do too much either way.
Mark, yes, it is a nice place to live, especially this time of year when the summer hibernation is ending and you can stand to be outdoors all day long again.
Yes, Ray, thanks. Either it makes no difference or I get a cast on the rest of the photo then, and correcting it puts the sky back to reeaalllly blue again.
I use a Canon A300 (cuz I can throw it in my purse) and it also gives me incredible blue-ness; which I like. Also, remember that with most digitals, blue is an issue. Anyhow, I just let the sky be blue and live with it.
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I am having a weird problem with PE and the files from my Canon s400. When
I adjust levels to get a good color on an outdoor photo, the sky is always impossibly, ridiculously blue, like I was overusing a polarizing filter, or like some older books you see where the printer evidently believed there was no such thing as oversaturated color.
Does anyone know what I can do to fix this, outside of cutting out the sky
Learn how to rescue details, remove flyaways, add volume, and enhance the definition of hair in any photo. We break down every tool and technique in Photoshop to get picture-perfect hair, every time.
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