Colour reproduction under difficult lighting conditions

[David Morison]

This is a processed image of a Pink-footed Goose, a very unusual visitor to my local patch, taken yesterday afternoon in appalling light. The bird's head and neck should be a much richer brown but I can't achieve that however I try in LR. I assume the relevant wavelength just wasn't available in the ambient light so I can't reproduce it. Has anyone any ideas? High ISO 6400.

591A2098 by DAVID MORISON, on Flickr

Many thanks

David

[paulr5604]

Re: Colour reproduction under difficult lighting conditions

Have you tried setting the white balance reference point as its feathers where its wing meets the tail feathers?

[El Sid]

Re: Colour reproduction under difficult lighting conditions

Don't know anything about lightroom though if it's a raw image, or even a JPEG, then it should be possible to set a custom white balance from the white feathers.

Failing that I managed to do it roughly in a photo-editor (pixlr) subject to not knowing exactly what colour the goose should be.

Duplicated the image and used the colour balance option to make the bird brown - I had to add a lot of yellow , magenta and red to the mix. This rather overcooked the background so I used a selective layer mask for the subject at fully clear with the rest of the mask set to about 35% transparency. The example below is a bit rough and ready but you get the idea...



Needs a bit more work in levels etc...

[Parsen66]

Re: Colour reproduction under difficult lighting conditions

This is what I got by using the WB picker inside of Camera Raw

22153889733_c3f4478b41_b.jpg

[David Morison]

Re: Colour reproduction under difficult lighting conditions

Thanks chaps, this is what I got following your advice, which seems about the right balance and the pink on the bill is about right too:

591A2098 by DAVID MORISON, on Flickr

David

[paulr5604]

Re: Colour reproduction under difficult lighting conditions

The colour balance looks good now David

[El Sid]

Re: Colour reproduction under difficult lighting conditions

Think that's nailed it...

[Parsen66]

Re: Colour reproduction under difficult lighting conditions

Think that's nailed it...

Agreed