Bad RSA correction

[dealy663]

Hi,

Last night (Turkey day) I had a tough time getting my D100's white balance set correctly. So today I'm correcting all of the images using PK Color. This one particular image really didn't work with the RSA Standard color correction. Since you guys have said that these controls are never supposed to do any bad to the image I'm wondering if I've found an instance where it is failing.

I'm attaching the before and after photos for you to review. Let me know if there is something I should have done differently (other than getting the wb correct in the first place).

Thanks, Derek

P.S. BTW once I got PK Color working I'm really grooving on the tone corrections and color temperature tools.

<a href="http://pangloss.grandprixsw.com:8000/pub/oneoffs/BadRSACorrection.jpg">Bad RSA Correction</a>
<a href="http://pangloss.grandprixsw.com:8000/pub/oneoffs/OriginalImage.jpg">Original Image</a>

[dealy663]

Ok,

I continued to fool around with this and realized that I may have been using the tool incorrectly. Here is a <a href="http://pangloss.grandprixsw.com:8000/pub/oneoffs/ColesFirstToEat.jpg">copy of the image</a> after I attacked it with a different sequence of adjustments.

In this one I applied a color temperature adjustment of CT-B 1/2 followed by RSA Gray Balance STD. Then I did some tone enhancements and levels. This came out much more to my liking. I think I've figured out that one should do a Color Temperature adjustment first, and then follow it up with the RSA Gray Balance.

This is all really looking pretty good to me. I usually only shoot JPG when doing snapshots, but I think with PK Color I can really make use of JPEGs more often because I have controls that are quite similar to what is available to me when processing RAW images with Nikon Capture. In Capture my usual workflow is to neutralize the shadows by hand in each channel, and then to set my black point, along with white balance adjustments.

Derek

[Martin Evening]

With an image like this you would be better off using the RSA Neutralize first to remove the predominant cast in this picture. The heaviness of the cast iis quite similar to the London tube image used in the User Guide. I found RSA neutralize did a good job of removing most of the cast, although there remained the problem of mixed lighting in the original photograph. However, after I did this I saw your revised effort and have to confess this is better! That is not the way we necessarily intended PhotoKit Color to be used, but if it produces a good result, then great. Sorry I couldn't upload an example of the correction, for some reason I could not easily make the file small enough to do this.

Martin

[dealy663]

Yes, subsequently I've found that attempting to do a color temp adjustment before the Gray Balance doesn't always work. I guess that there are no hard and fast rules other than do whatever it takes to get it to look right, even if that means using whats available in a somewhat unorthodox way.

Here is another image of the boys, that I was unable to correct in a way that I was happy with the colors. I suspect that this was because of the mixed lighting also. After my attempts with the color corrections, there was an unnatural rosiness on the smaller boy's cheeks just below his eyes. The second picture was what I came up with after giving up on a proper color conversion. If you can come up with something better let me know.

<a href="http://pangloss.grandprixsw.com:8000/pub/oneoffs/ColeKyle-orig.jpg">Original Cousins</a>
<a href="http://pangloss.grandprixsw.com:8000/pub/oneoffs/ColeKyle-ThrownInTheTowel.jpg">After throwing in the towel</a>

Also I was unable to upload the pix to the forum, that's why I included links to my website.

Derek

[Bruce Fraser]

RSA Neutralize at 30-40% opacity seems to do a fairly good job on the cousins...