This morning I created this image of my best friend Skittles. It's a very powerful image to me, but there's one minor detail that's nagging me. On the left side where the sun saturated the wall, there's a tiny rainbow of colors in the transition. I've tried messing with the sliders in Lightroom and a few tools in Photoshop but nothing seems to be working.
Any suggestions???
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Nice composition. She seems to be radiating that light.
This is just a guess, but from here it looks like the abrupt color desaturation you're perceiving as a rainbow may be the "Recovery" feature of the Adobe Camera Raw (or whatever they call it in Lightroom) converter at work.
I'm assuming the wall behind Skittles is overexposed to the point where you have had to use the recovery slider to pull in some detail in the brightest area. Unfortunately, beyond a certain point Camera Raw completely desaturates the colors. This quite often works for clouds in skies, but as you can see it does have its downsides.
You can repair it in Photoshop by sampling the color in the wall where it's not overexposed for the foreground color (this will be a light tan), choosing the paintbrush tool, a large (e.g., 200 pixel) brush, setting the Mode to Color, and the Opacity to something less than 100% - e.g. 75%. Paint over the transition and the almost white wall will be made the proper color.
You're right Noel, I did set the recovery slider about halfway (46), primarily because without it there was practically no gradient, just a strong tan band of color then the blown out wall.
Tried your color trick and all it did was spread the rainbow. Tried different sample points, different levels of opacity on the brush (set to color as you suggested).
But as I played with it I began to wonder if it's a limitation of my monitor? I varied the angle and it impacted the intensity of the colors. Perhaps in print the rainbow isn't there. I'm going to have a friend print it on his Epson pro printer and see....
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
It's possible it's your monitor. When I ran your image through the process I described it ended up looking pretty good. Try painting the whole light area.
I didn't fuss with the rainbow, partly because I am not sure of the specific concern. I just focused on Skittles. I am not sure if this is even close to what you are after. (Perhaps not, you wanted the more subdued, quiet look?) Oh, and I used LAB to boost the colors a bit.
Hi Kevin - yeah, your version is much brighter than the softer mood I'm after. But notice that the upper diagonal tansition between the sunlight and shadow has a bar of tan tint? That's what the original looked like only stronger. As Noel noted, when I pushed the recover slider I got a more gradual transition, but ended up with just a hint of blue and (I think) even pink. My "rainbow" as it were.
Noel, I went back and tried again, and even tried dodge, smudge and other tools. I grabbed color from everywhere I could think of. Your idea to try painting the entire white area isn't bad - the thing that made my attempts look bad is that the color I painting on stood out worse against the blown out area.
If you got it to work, then it's either my monitor or my technique. I'll keep trying!!
Thanks Guys!
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Linear Mode
