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Color Correction Trod
Hi /p/, just wanting to ask some advice about touching up in Photoshop CS2

I work in a photography studio doing digital touch-up and color correction. The photographer shoots on location exclusively, so I have to deal with more than a few photos with odd coloring, tinting, and under/over exposure...

What I want to know is, how do you go about fixing a photo up, color, contrast, brightness, and so on?

For fixing exposure I tend to throw on a curves layer and bump up the brightness, or duplicate the background layer and set the dup to Screen and lower the opacity. Lately I've found the exposure tool under Adjustments and find that setting the black/white/midtone point to be pretty good, though not completely reliable.

For Color, I use curves and try to set the black/white points using the eyedropper. Midtones are impossible, as there tend to be none in the picture, so odd color casts have to be eyeballed manually.

Any advice on these items, or anything else you might think is useful? I've been doing decent work, but I do not feel consistent in my techniques. Sometimes I do great doing one thing, then that same technique completely destroys another picture.
>> Anonymous
A photography studio operator asking on 4chan for advice about the very essentials of his work, about which he apparently have little to no idea... How did you get the job in the first place?

I pray this is a fucking troll.

>Sometimes I do great doing one thing, then that same technique completely destroys another picture.
Bingo! There's not one ultimate way to process all the photos. If you want it done well, you virtually start from scratch on each one.
>> Zdenek
Picasa2 from Google has a "I'm Feeling Lucky" button that fixes a photo automatically. It had awful results on my pics, but I guess I wasn't feeling lucky enough for it to work.
But seriously, Photoshop has several color-balancing tools that will help, unless there are too large burnt areas.
>> Trod
I am not a photography studio operator, but merely a photo retoucher in a small, privately owned studio.

I'm asking for advice because I've been doing pretty well, though I do better on indoor shots rather than outdoor shots; ergo, I'd like to know what else is out there, stuff that I don't know, that might be of some use. I don't assume I know everything.

I admit that it is foolish to hope there is a catch-all color correction technique, but, hey, it'd be nice if there was, right? Or at least, a solid technique from which to start on most shots.
>> Anonymous
Difffrent cameras do different things. What works in digital does not work in a scanned negative.
There is no simple solution or apprach and therefore we are all DOOMED.
>> Anonymous
There is no catch- all color correction technique, for better or for worse. First off, the photographer should be adjusting his camera as he's shooting so you're not the one who has to do all the work. There are some photos that just can't be corrected properly.

Also, i'd recommend just taking each photograph as it comes, because what works on one photo most def. will not work on another. I'm old fashioned and still shoot slides, I scan them in, then use photoshop to go back in and "correct" that color which I lost in my scanning. I've learned over time that if i leave it up to photoshop to correct the photo, they turn out quite horribly. Use your eye, and use what looks right. There are tools and such in photoshop that let's you manually adjust brightness levels and the r/g/b or c/m/y/k levels. I find that those work best to do what I need to.
>> Anonymous
You work in a studio for a photographer? Why the fuck aren't you fixing the colour in RAW? Why the fuck ain't your photographer shooting RAW?
>> Trod
>>35683
If I had an answer for that, I'd tell you. I assume it has something to do with the workflow they've worked out since they started up, and now things are just the way they are. That said, we've been looking into processing RAW files for a bit; I've been assigned to do the research for how to start it.

I do agree that one should leave as little to photoshop itself as possible. Auto color refuses to not fuck up the color of any picture, and that's even with changing the settings using a CS2 book to optimize the results.

So yeah, I do tend to just eyeball it most of the time, going back and forth between color curves, color balance, and hue/saturation.