Software "filter" to remove tungsten lighting effects?

Hi!

The photographer was not allowed to use flash during the vows of a wedding in a chapel with tungsten lighting, so the photos have a red-orange overcast. I was able to use PS 6.0 to "hack" the tungsten lighting effect into a bareable level.

I'm only an occasional PS user, and used hit-or-miss to achieve barely acceptable results. Are there better programs to remove the tungsten lighting overcast? Are there digital filters or settings or plug-ins for PS to do this with professional and accurate results?

Thank you,
Wendie

Wendie Luter wrote:

Hi!

The photographer was not allowed to use flash during the vows of a wedding in a chapel with tungsten lighting, so the photos have a red-orange overcast. I was able to use PS 6.0 to "hack" the tungsten lighting effect into a bareable level.

I'm only an occasional PS user, and used hit-or-miss to achieve barely acceptable results. Are there better programs to remove the tungsten lighting overcast? Are there digital filters or settings or plug-ins for PS to do this with professional and accurate results?
Thank you,
Wendie

Rather then try to fix the problem after the fact why not just set the camera's white balance to tungsten. Better yet shoot raw and set the WB to whatever you want when converting the raw images.

If you have photos that have already been taken then look at remove color cast, this does not work as well has shooting with the correct WB to begin with but it does work OK.

Scott

On 9/8/07 12:00 PM, in article ,
"Wendie Luter" wrote:

Hi!

The photographer was not allowed to use flash during the vows of a wedding in a chapel with tungsten lighting, so the photos have a red-orange overcast. I was able to use PS 6.0 to "hack" the tungsten lighting effect into a bareable level.

I'm only an occasional PS user, and used hit-or-miss to achieve barely acceptable results. Are there better programs to remove the tungsten lighting overcast? Are there digital filters or settings or plug-ins for PS to do this with professional and accurate results?
Thank you,
Wendie

Lightroom comes to mind.

I've used this with good results:
http://www.thepluginsite.com/products/photowiz/colorwasher/i ndex.htm

Also used AGD Color Temperature & Exposure Correction but looks like it is no longer available.

You're not alone :) ...
http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00Acoa

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 07:13:26 -1000, Scott W
wrote:

Wendie Luter wrote:

Hi!

The photographer was not allowed to use flash during the vows of a wedding in a chapel with tungsten lighting, so the photos have a red-orange overcast. I was able to use PS 6.0 to "hack" the tungsten lighting effect into a bareable level.

I'm only an occasional PS user, and used hit-or-miss to achieve barely acceptable results. Are there better programs to remove the tungsten lighting overcast? Are there digital filters or settings or plug-ins for PS to do this with professional and accurate results?
Thank you,
Wendie

Rather then try to fix the problem after the fact why not just set the camera's white balance to tungsten. Better yet shoot raw and set the WB to whatever you want when converting the raw images.

If you have photos that have already been taken then look at remove color cast, this does not work as well has shooting with the correct WB to begin with but it does work OK.

Scott

The photos have been taken, and can't be re-taken. How do I remove "color cast?" Is this a PhotoShop option?

Thank you,
Wendie

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 12:16:11 -0500, George Kerby
wrote:

On 9/8/07 12:00 PM, in article ,
"Wendie Luter" wrote:

Hi!

The photographer was not allowed to use flash during the vows of a wedding in a chapel with tungsten lighting, so the photos have a red-orange overcast. I was able to use PS 6.0 to "hack" the tungsten lighting effect into a bareable level.

I'm only an occasional PS user, and used hit-or-miss to achieve barely acceptable results. Are there better programs to remove the tungsten lighting overcast? Are there digital filters or settings or plug-ins for PS to do this with professional and accurate results?
Thank you,
Wendie

Lightroom comes to mind.

At your suggestion, I checked Lightroom out. This looks to be the solution.

Thank you,
Wendie

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 13:00:23 -0400, Wendie Luter wrote:

Hi!

The photographer was not allowed to use flash during the vows of a wedding in a chapel with tungsten lighting, so the photos have a red-orange overcast. I was able to use PS 6.0 to "hack" the tungsten lighting effect into a bareable level.

I'm only an occasional PS user, and used hit-or-miss to achieve barely acceptable results. Are there better programs to remove the tungsten lighting overcast? Are there digital filters or settings or plug-ins for PS to do this with professional and accurate results?
Thank you,
Wendie

Try "ColorWasher v2.0x" plugin from http://thepluginsite.com/

It's able to balance out some very difficult lighting situations that are outside of the control of the photographer or any camera's auto white-balance features. I've used it to effectively balance UV lamps + incandescent + fluorescent lamps on my subjects when all those light sources were being used equally in aggregate to attract and macro-photograph night-flying insects. A white-balance lighting nightmare situation that no other editor could even come close to resolving properly.

p.s. Dump that archaic PhotoShop program and any new incarnations of it. Even CS3 is no better. It's 16-bit-only math along with its outdated bicubic interpolation for all its manipulation and cloning tools is last century's total nonsense. Try a better and more advanced editor like PhotoLine 32 from www.pl32.net It's been a 32-bit program for over a decade now (hence the name PL32) and even has Lanczos8 interpolation for all its tools, to retain any details that PhotoShop's bicubic would smear and blur. It also works just fine with the ColorWasher plugin.

Wendie Luter wrote:

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 07:13:26 -1000, Scott W
wrote:

Wendie Luter wrote:

Hi!

The photographer was not allowed to use flash during the vows of a wedding in a chapel with tungsten lighting, so the photos have a red-orange overcast. I was able to use PS 6.0 to "hack" the tungsten lighting effect into a bareable level.

I'm only an occasional PS user, and used hit-or-miss to achieve barely acceptable results. Are there better programs to remove the tungsten lighting overcast? Are there digital filters or settings or plug-ins for PS to do this with professional and accurate results?
Thank you,
Wendie

Rather then try to fix the problem after the fact why not just set the camera's white balance to tungsten. Better yet shoot raw and set the WB to whatever you want when converting the raw images.

If you have photos that have already been taken then look at remove color cast, this does not work as well has shooting with the correct WB to begin with but it does work OK.

Scott

The photos have been taken, and can't be re-taken. How do I remove "color cast?" Is this a PhotoShop option?

It should be, I use Photoshop elements, small brother to Photoshop, and there it is under the enhance menu, adjust color. You get an eye dropper that you then click on something that you know should be white in the photo.

Scott

"Scott W" wrote:

It should be, I use Photoshop elements, small brother to Photoshop, and there it is under the enhance menu, adjust color. You get an eye dropper that you then click on something that you know should be white in the photo.

Have you ever gotten a decent result doing that? I certainly haven't. In real life, nothing's actually white* and any daylight scene has both shadow and directly lit areas with different color temperatures.

In raw conversion, checking the overall impression by eye and looking at the readouts for areas that should be gray or white to make sure that things are reasonable is a pain, but it seems to be required.

*: I just did a test shot with three reference cards: a resolution test image printed on enhanced matte (very blue from the whiteners), a Kodak 18% gray card (roughly neutral), and a Kodak gray scale (patches of different gray levels in 1/3 stop increments) that is strongly warm toned. Not only did all three have different color temperatures, but the differences were large.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

David J. Littleboy wrote:

"Scott W" wrote:

It should be, I use Photoshop elements, small brother to Photoshop, and there it is under the enhance menu, adjust color. You get an eye dropper that you then click on something that you know should be white in the photo.

Have you ever gotten a decent result doing that? I certainly haven't. In real life, nothing's actually white* and any daylight scene has both shadow and directly lit areas with different color temperatures.
In raw conversion, checking the overall impression by eye and looking at the readouts for areas that should be gray or white to make sure that things are reasonable is a pain, but it seems to be required.

*: I just did a test shot with three reference cards: a resolution test image printed on enhanced matte (very blue from the whiteners), a Kodak 18% gray card (roughly neutral), and a Kodak gray scale (patches of different gray levels in 1/3 stop increments) that is strongly warm toned. Not only did all three have different color temperatures, but the differences were large.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

In Elements 3 there is Filters/adjustment/photo filter/
you can select 80 and 82 cooling filters and play around with them. They do have a density setting and if you get one picture to look right then applying that setting to sebsequent shots (under that same lighting) should - in theory - work as well for them.
This assumes your memory of what colors looked like is correct and that your monitor is calibrated.

As David points out, nothing is white, this tool allows you to make adjustments with your eyes rather than Photoshop's single fix it button.

JD

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 13:00:23 -0400, Wendie Luter
wrote:

Hi!

The photographer was not allowed to use flash during the vows of a wedding in a chapel with tungsten lighting, so the photos have a red-orange overcast. I was able to use PS 6.0 to "hack" the tungsten lighting effect into a bareable level.

I'm only an occasional PS user, and used hit-or-miss to achieve barely acceptable results. Are there better programs to remove the tungsten lighting overcast? Are there digital filters or settings or plug-ins for PS to do this with professional and accurate results?
Thank you,
Wendie

I used ColorWasher 2.02b and it did a very good job!

Thank you to all who responded.

Wendie

David J. Littleboy wrote:

"Scott W" wrote:

It should be, I use Photoshop elements, small brother to Photoshop, and there it is under the enhance menu, adjust color. You get an eye dropper that you then click on something that you know should be white in the photo.

Have you ever gotten a decent result doing that? I certainly haven't. In real life, nothing's actually white* and any daylight scene has both shadow and directly lit areas with different color temperatures.
In raw conversion, checking the overall impression by eye and looking at the readouts for areas that should be gray or white to make sure that things are reasonable is a pain, but it seems to be required.

*: I just did a test shot with three reference cards: a resolution test image printed on enhanced matte (very blue from the whiteners), a Kodak 18% gray card (roughly neutral), and a Kodak gray scale (patches of different gray levels in 1/3 stop increments) that is strongly warm toned. Not only did all three have different color temperatures, but the differences were large.

I don't have much luck with the remove color cast if the WB is off by very much and all I have to work with is a jpeg. If the color is close then the remove color cast can work ok. But I far prefer to work with the raw image, in which case the eye dropper often gets me close enough that I don't feel the need for further adjustments.

In this version of a photo I used the table cloth as my white reference, the resulting color temp comes out at 2050 and looks pretty good to my eye.
http://www.pbase.com/konascott/image/85274129

If I try to use the tea cup as a white reference I get a color temp of 1950, and the image look far to blue.
http://www.pbase.com/konascott/image/85274439
So you need a good white reference, or you need to adjust by hand.

If I try to work with a jpeg things are not as good, in this case I see the color temp at 2500, which give an image that if far too warm for my taste.
http://www.pbase.com/konascott/image/85274343

If I then use the remove color cast function, again using the tablecloth I get something that is not bad, but not as good as using the raw file. http://www.pbase.com/konascott/image/85274345

I find the remove color cast function is only of real value if it is not making large changes in the color.

I have had pretty good using remove color cast to correct photos taken through a windshield, which have a lot of green to them.

Scott

On 9/8/07 3:19 PM, in article ,
"Wendie Luter" wrote:

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 12:16:11 -0500, George Kerby
wrote:

On 9/8/07 12:00 PM, in article ,
"Wendie Luter" wrote:

Hi!

The photographer was not allowed to use flash during the vows of a wedding in a chapel with tungsten lighting, so the photos have a red-orange overcast. I was able to use PS 6.0 to "hack" the tungsten lighting effect into a bareable level.

I'm only an occasional PS user, and used hit-or-miss to achieve barely acceptable results. Are there better programs to remove the tungsten lighting overcast? Are there digital filters or settings or plug-ins for PS to do this with professional and accurate results?
Thank you,
Wendie

Lightroom comes to mind.

At your suggestion, I checked Lightroom out. This looks to be the solution.

Thank you,
Wendie

You are welcome.

David J. Littleboy wrote:
<snip>

Have you ever gotten a decent result doing that? I certainly haven't. In real life, nothing's actually white* and any daylight scene has both shadow and directly lit areas with different color temperatures.

<snip>
That is generally true, but I have never been a guest at a wedding in the US that didn't have _some_ white. I will say that I have encountered some Chinese weddings (quite often held in large restaurants in Austin; the restaurants usually continue to serve customers in a small segregated area)) where red is the predominant color.
Allen

There are 3 things to do...

1) In this type of situation, set your camera's white balance to Auto. The camera will compensate for the tungsten lighting.

2) Shoot in RAW mode. When you open a RAW image in Photo Shop CS3, the first screen you get will have a "white balance" drop-down, and also a "temperature" (as in color temperature, which is also what we call white balance) slider that you can adjust to make the image warmer or cooler.

3) If all else fails, try the Image > Adjustments > Auto Levels command. It often does a nice job automatically, but sometimes not.

Your photographer really should know these things, unless it was a non-pro just helping out.

HTH,
John Nasta

"Scott W" wrote in message

David J. Littleboy wrote:

"Scott W" wrote:

It should be, I use Photoshop elements, small brother to Photoshop, and there it is under the enhance menu, adjust color. You get an eye dropper that you then click on something that you know should be white in the photo.

Have you ever gotten a decent result doing that? I certainly haven't. In real life, nothing's actually white* and any daylight scene has both shadow and directly lit areas with different color temperatures.
In raw conversion, checking the overall impression by eye and looking at the readouts for areas that should be gray or white to make sure that things are reasonable is a pain, but it seems to be required.
*: I just did a test shot with three reference cards: a resolution test image printed on enhanced matte (very blue from the whiteners), a Kodak 18% gray card (roughly neutral), and a Kodak gray scale (patches of different gray levels in 1/3 stop increments) that is strongly warm toned. Not only did all three have different color temperatures, but the differences were large.

I don't have much luck with the remove color cast if the WB is off by very much and all I have to work with is a jpeg. If the color is close then the remove color cast can work ok. But I far prefer to work with the raw image, in which case the eye dropper often gets me close enough that I don't feel the need for further adjustments.

In this version of a photo I used the table cloth as my white reference, the resulting color temp comes out at 2050 and looks pretty good to my eye.
http://www.pbase.com/konascott/image/85274129

If I try to use the tea cup as a white reference I get a color temp of 1950, and the image look far to blue.
http://www.pbase.com/konascott/image/85274439
So you need a good white reference, or you need to adjust by hand.
If I try to work with a jpeg things are not as good, in this case I see the color temp at 2500, which give an image that if far too warm for my taste.
http://www.pbase.com/konascott/image/85274343

If I then use the remove color cast function, again using the tablecloth I get something that is not bad, but not as good as using the raw file. http://www.pbase.com/konascott/image/85274345

I find the remove color cast function is only of real value if it is not making large changes in the color.

I have had pretty good using remove color cast to correct photos taken through a windshield, which have a lot of green to them.
Scott