Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Technique Tuesday: Go Away Green! Shooting Mixed Lighting With Florescent Light? Get The Color Perfect In Lightroom 3

Good Morning Everybody,

Flower Dance Ahhhh…, another beautiful day in paradise around here, my program for Friday Photo School is about ready to go, and the whole world is coming up roses or tulips.  There, that should put everybody in a good mood where ever you are ;~)

That said, let’s get right to today’s Technique Tuesday.  Here we go…

Go Away Green! Shooting Mixed Lighting With Florescent Light? Get The Color Perfect In Lightroom 3

Do you ever have trouble getting those ugly greens out of the background and skin tones when shooting in mixed lighting conditions that include florescent fixtures? It really can be challenging now and then. This past weekend while working on a job in Lightroom 3, I was constantly challenged with that exact situation. After trying a few ideas I hadn't tried before and then, Bingo!, I had found a terrific solution to the problem.

Here is the deal. florescent green is not really green, it's closer to yellow, at least to Lightroom. In the past, I would just hit the color channels and desaturate the yellow channel. As long as there were no other predominate yellows in the scene, it worked pretty well.

Over the weekend, facing the same challenge, but this time with that nasty florescent greenish color in the shadow areas of the skin tones, the yellow "desaturate" option just wasn't working as well as I wanted. About half way through the job I looked at those color sliders again and decided to use the hue sliders instead. To make a long story short, watch the lesson below to see how easily I made my problem go away for good and give me great skin tones to boot - very cool.

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That's it for today's Technique Tuesday gang. I've got to get back to my real job so have a great day  and I'll see you tomorrow for a very provocative post – “Lightroom Production In "Slow-mo Mode".

See ya' then, David

4 comments:

  1. As ever, a joy to watch and learn.

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  2. Desaturating the yellow also has the negative effect of turning blond hair grey - not very flattering to women.

    Thanks for another great tool for our toolbag!

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  3. This is a good technique, but should be played with for each different situation. With all the different brands and types of flourescent lighting on the market (cool white, soft white, bright white, name brand, store brand), the traditional "green" cast isn't simply green anymore, especially when it's mixed with a little strobe, sun, tungsten, nearby reflective surfaces, etc. And you risk changing similar colors in your subject as you try to fix your background. I'd still rather use my HonlPhoto gels to get the flash close to the existing light if I need an even coloration throughout an image.

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