Photoshopping Advice Please

[Chris Pickford]

With certain orange-brown species, I have some difficulty with getting a reasonably realistic colour reproduction whatever I do In Photoshop (Elements 5). A good example is a Comma, which always looks too ginger 'ish, or Small Copper where for example several I saw this lunchtime, despite being quite strongly reddish-orange, have recorded with a more ginger tone. Normal hue/saturation adjustments don't seem to arrive at a colour very close to the original. I have had this with all of the Nikon DSLRs I have used - I am quite sure for those more expert than I with P'Shop this is a trivial issue.

Any tips please?

Chris

[Dave McCormick]

I can't exactly help, but have anyone else had the same problem as me when photographing Red Admirals and the orange marks appear to light? They can be corrected on computer to look darker as they should be, but yes, I have noticed the same problems as you Chris. Same in Orange-tips, I found the orange on males appears to yellowish when I shoot them.

[Zonda]

Hya Chris, and Dave. In my experience, butterflies and most other things that you may want to photograph pick up tints and colours from adjacent plants, and trees, and the sky. I have pics of white butterflies that are pastel green, pale blue, etc. I have found also that butterflies vary quite a bit in their colouration. Are you trying to match your photographs to the colours in a field guide? It's a personal thing really, individuals eyesight can vary. I love to shoot with the camera set on 'Vivid' colour capture, because it gives me the Velvia effect, a film that i used a lot in the past, which punched up the colour slightly. I dont think adjustments in photoshop etc are the answer, but hey its personal choice.

[Gruditch]

Are you taking the pictures in full sun Chris, You could try adjusting using Levels.

Gruditch

[Dave McCormick]

Hya Chris, and Dave. In my experience, butterflies and most other things that you may want to photograph pick up tints and colours from adjacent plants, and trees, and the sky. I have pics of white butterflies that are pastel green, pale blue, etc. I have found also that butterflies vary quite a bit in their colouration. Are you trying to match your photographs to the colours in a field guide? It's a personal thing really, individuals eyesight can vary.

Actually I am trying to shoot the butterfly on what I can see it looks like e.g. Red Admirals red lines looking red and not orange/yellow or Orange-Tip males having orange tips like I can see they do, not having yellowish ones that I get when I take photo. I have noticed that to get white butterflies right you have to under expose them by 1 or 2 steps to get them right and it does get harder in full sun though.

You could try adjusting using Levels.

Thats what I do, and it can work well sometimes I find. Better than just adusting th contrast/brightness which does not always get you the desired reult compared to adjusting the levels of brighness and contrast.

[Lee Hurrell]

Hi Gary/Dave,

Please excuse the new boy question but I haven't come across Levels yet, what are they?

Also, with Whites, try playing around with White Balance settings and shooting a series with different white balancing. I did this in full sun and it did help. (I will get round to posting some at some point...).

Cheers

Lee

[Gruditch]

In Elements press enhance and you should see Auto Levels, I use the manual level slider in Paint shop pro 11, very effective.

Gruditch

[Rogerdodge]

Chris
If your colours are looking "wrong" straight out of the camera, and you are using auto white balance, it seems to me that your monitor may not be calibrated.
If that is the case, all your work in PS will only make things worse.
Do a google for monitor calibration and you will find lots of solutios.
Make sure you save untouched copies of all your photos - in time your editing skills will improve, and you will benefit from revisiting your earlier photos to get better end results.

[eccles]

It depends on the camera, but with mine I have a set of colour options such as Standard, Vivid, Potrait, Landscape etc in the "Creative Styles" menu. The setting marked as 'Neutral' apparently applies nothing to the image, and gives the most accurate colour rendition, whereas all the others mess around with the image, even the raw file, before it is saved to the memory card. Sometimes a little extra saturation is needed when post processing but using the Neutral setting when shooting avoids those occasional oversaturated oranges. Look for something similar in your camera settings.

Oh, and I don't shoot jpegs.

[Chris Pickford]

Thanks for the advice, which has been most useful.

I forgot to say originally that the files are all RAW, that I shoot in full sun/overcast, (but preferred conditions are hazy sun to reduce shadows) or flash - the ginger problem appears under all conditions. Oddly, if I use a colour digital test chart(IMASYS) I don't get the problem, it appears (maybe?) to originate from the fact that the colours we see on the butterfly are a mixture of pigment plus refraction.

If I edit the levels, colours, saturation to improve the red/browns, then the green of leaves looks a little wrong. I have tried (this weekend) selectively editing the butterfly alone and that works well, but is a bit fiddly.

Chris

[JKT]

Ah! Photoshop, RAW and wrong colors. All it takes is that the default camera profile in Photoshop is less than accurate. That was the case with PS CS 2 and Canon 20D for example. It was just about impossible to get any colors right. On the other hand, Canon's DPP gave much better colors. It's possible to adjust the profile - at least in Phohoshop - but that requires equipment. There are also somewhat better generic profiles floating around the net, but the best results require profile made with your own camera.

[Vixpix]

[quote="Zonda"]Hya Chris, and Dave. In my experience, butterflies and most other things that you may want to photograph pick up tints and colours from adjacent plants, and trees, and the sky.

Hi Chris
Just to add to what Zonda has said, butterflies and indeed most things out-doors are often very reflective in strong direct sunlight and even in bright overcast conditions and this reflected light will bleach out the colour, particularly on reds. (i used to have this same problem with some 35mm film types, so it's not unique to digital)
One way i use to get around this problem at the taking stage is to use a polarizing filter which will cut out the reflected light allowing the true colours to show through. Not an ideal solution to the problem i know, as a polarizer will slow down your shutter speed by a stop. But nevertheless, i have had some success using a polarizer when taking shots of perched dragonflies. Definately worth a go if you have good enough lighting conditions.
Lighting conditions would seem to be the important factor in how colours are rendered and i have always found that bright overcast conditions will produce the best results for accurate colours.
Another way to improve the chances of accurate colour is to use exposure compensation of -1 which will allow more lattitude when it comes to post processing. Under-exposure is preferable to over-exposure because burnt out areas in an over-exposed image will never reveal any detail in post processing.
None of this may make the slightest difference to the problem you are having Chris, but it might be worth a try

Regards
Vic.