Color theory - why are the whites going blue?

[brusby]

1st photo is as shot.

2nd has some global correction to counteract overly blue skin tones (plus some vignetting added).

Anyone know why the whites in the t-shirt and lanyard in the 2nd photo are going blueish? Seems they should be getting warmer like the rest of the photo.

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Corrected but with whites going blue

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[Sparrow]

... lighting? or the wrong film type

 

[Pirate]

What are the specs? What film? Coated lens?

 

[Pirate]

I copied the first original shot and did some basic adjustments.... You must have done a lot more because I got something alot different than your edited version.

 

[geertvn]

The warm light in the background throws the light balance off. It's been recognized as too warm (yellow-brown) and the camera compensates to make it white, thus adding blue.

 

[brusby]

This is a shot I did with a digital camera. Unfortunately I was in a bit of a rush and the white balance was set way too cool, as you can see from the 1st photo.

The subject is in a big warehouse and he's standing just inside of a large door which opens to the street and which is letting in the indirect sunlight illuminating him -- kinda like a large picture window.

What I've done so far in Lightroom is to adjust white balance in an attempt to get decent skin tones. After warming things up with the white balance sliders, his face looked too ruddy and the beard was too orange, so I had to pull back a bit of red saturation and a bit of blue saturation.

I also increased vibrance quite a bit and added some vignetting.

Then it became apparent the whites of his t-shirt and the lanyard around his neck were excessively cool. i don't have any idea why the rest of the photo would get warmer, and yet those whites would get cooler. And strangely the whites of his eyes didn't turn too blue. Hmmmm.

 

[philipus]

The OOF highlights on the corrected image look weird to me.

Here's an attempt. In ColorPerfect's TouchUp function, I clicked the neckstrap on the left side to set the colour balance. Then back in CS5 using the Levels's grey eyedropper I clicked the light grey part of the "bend" of the frame of the glasses.

More could certainly be done, for instance the skin is still a bit too red for my taste but, it's a start.

cheers
Philip

 

[lynnb]

In LR4 I hit Auto WB and got a pretty good result but still a bit too blue. The t-shirt is white in the light and pale blue in the shadows. Temp= +50, Tint= +14.

Next I grabbed the Temp slider and increased it to +85. This gives nice warm skin tones while the t-shirt is a warm-white. Looking good.

Added Vibrance +25 and Saturation +11 to give a stronger colour to his face. Boosted Clarity to +15, and then pulled back the Highlights to -19 as they were looking a little pale after boosting Clarity.

Vignetting -35.

The only remaining problem is the blown t-shirt. I'd use an adjustment brush to bring it back within the exposure range (Edit: just done. Also desaturated the white t-shirt at the same time. But forgot to do the same for the neck strap 🙁).

Pulled back exposure to -0.10 for a more conservative look.

That now looks pretty good to me. What do you think?

 

[lynnb]

Here's a more aggressive processing approach (which I prefer). Details to follow:

LR processing:
------
Adjustment brush for t-shirt and strap:
Exposure -0.44
Contrast -70
Saturation -100
-------
WB
Temp +85
Tint +14
(see my comments above about starting with Auto WB, then evaluating and adjusting WB from that point. This approach usually works, but sometimes Auto doesn't even get in the ball park, in which case I start with the Temp slider, then fine tune with the Tint.)
-------
Exposure -0.10
Contrast +20
Highlights -7
Shadows -35
Whites 0
Blacks -17
-------
Clarity +15
Vibrance +25
Saturation +10
-------
Tone Curve
Highlights 0
Lights 0
Darks +13
Shadows -35
--------
Post crop vignetting
Amount -37
---------
this is all done by eye on a calibrated Trinitron CRT

Cheers,

 

[Sam N]

Is the original a RAW file?

 

[sevo]

The T-shirt will have been washed some regular laundry detergent containing optical brighteners (which down-convert UV to blue to counter the natural yellow tinge of cotton). When underexposed, it IS slightly blue. What is more, there is no other good white reference point in that image either - the reflection in the glass is a stop or two above white, the light outside the window seems to be warmer than the light on the subject (flash, or a south view vs. lit by north window issue), and eyes aren't really white either until they have been post-processed.

 

[Dwig]

...
Anyone know why the whites in the t-shirt and lanyard in the 2nd photo are going blueish? Seems they should be getting warmer like the rest of the photo.
...

It could be UV Phosphorescence, UV light causing the chemicals in the white fabric to glow in the blue to violet portion of the visible spectrum. This is common when fabrics have been treated with "optical brighteners" like those in many laundry detergents.

I did a quickie adjust in LR4 using the White Balance sampler and then sliding the Highlights slider all the way dark. The WB sampler initially produces what seamed a clean white, but when I dialed down the highlights a cyanish tinge returned. Killing the saturation for the Aqua and Blue in HSL gave this result:

 

[Samouraï]

Here's a more aggressive processing approach (which I prefer). Details to follow:

LR processing:
------
Adjustment brush for t-shirt and strap:
Exposure -0.44
Contrast -70
Saturation -100
-------
WB
Temp +85
Tint +14
(see my comments above about starting with Auto WB, then evaluating and adjusting WB from that point. This approach usually works, but sometimes Auto doesn't even get in the ball park, in which case I start with the Temp slider, then fine tune with the Tint.)
-------
Exposure -0.10
Contrast +20
Highlights -7
Shadows -35
Whites 0
Blacks -17
-------
Clarity +15
Vibrance +25
Saturation +10
-------
Tone Curve
Highlights 0
Lights 0
Darks +13
Shadows -35
--------
Post crop vignetting
Amount -37
---------
this is all done by eye on a calibrated Trinitron CRT

Cheers,

I'm not going to lie, this sort of post-processing seems really ugly and disingenuous to me.

 

[willie_901]

Since the OP says the WB was accidentally mis-set, we have to assume it is a jpeg. In-camera WB does not affect raw images in any fundamental way.

It also appears this scene was not by a color sources with a single color temperature. This means there is no single color temperature parameter that will work for the entire scene. This is why the whites went blue.

The selective color temperature adjustments as applied above are the only way to deal with these circumstances.

Shooting in raw + JPEG for scenes with mixed color temperate sources is wise because if you need to significantly alter the color temperature of different regions, the raw data can provide superior results since none of the data is discarded by compression.

 

[Rangefinderfreak]

Perfect example why I HATE digital photography...Put in Ektachrome X or 64 and all will be alright...

 

[OurManInTangier]

Tricky...and a little odd that the effect is only on certain whites and not others.

Some valiant attempts at PP'ing from various people but your second image is, to my eye, far and away more natural than anything else posted. Perhaps using the selection tools to select the t-shirt and lanyard and then adjusting the colour solely of those elements ( you'll probably end up having to reduce the opacity and work around it a little to get texture and shade back into those areas.

 

[pepeguitarra]

Perfect example why I HATE digital photography...Put in Ektachrome X or 64 and all will be alright...

I hate to spend more time working on the computer than shooting photos! Maybe, I should go B&W only.

 

[defconfunk]

Film will do the same thing. Go out and shoot tungsten film under daylight, without a color correction filter. All of your images will be blue.

+1

Especially when your recommended films (Ektachrome) are no longer made. Plus, shooting inside a warehouse with ISO64? I know my hands aren't steady enough for that.

My firsth thought when I saw the OP's photo was that it was under-exposed Ektar.

 

[Dwig]

Perfect example why I HATE digital photography...Put in Ektachrome X or 64 and all will be alright...

It wouldn't help if the root cause is dissimilar light sources or UV phosphorescence. Both impact film as readily as digital and film is more limited in the degree of correction that can be applied in post, digital or wet darkroom.

 

[brusby]

Thanks everyone for your input. This was mostly a theoretical question about how almost everything in the processed photo could get warmer while just certain whites got cooler, particularly since all the processing was done globally and the same settings were applied to everything.

Or, stated another way, how can adding warm tones like yellow and/or red to the whole photo make everything warmer but make whites cooler?

Since a few people have asked, here are my exact settings done in Lightroom 5. The original was a DNG (raw) file:


Regarding processing steps I took in Lighroom I did the following:

1) applied a camera profile made with a Colorchecker Passport (instead of the default Adobe).

2) adjusted the sliders for white balance to remove the excessive blue from the skin tones. Just done by eye without using the eye dropper tool.

Temp = 7150
Tint = +35

3) Other values

exposure +0.90
contrast 0
highlights -31
shadows 0
whites 0
blacks -13

clarity 0
vibrance +65
saturation +10

4) darkened the edges with a radial filter.

exposure = -0.61 (varies)
Temp = 0
white balance = 0

5) Then the face was too red and beard too orange so in the "Camera Calibration" section I did the following adjustments:

Red Primary
Hue -11
Saturation -21

Blue Primary
Hue -20
Saturation -20