As with any program in it’s early stages, their are things that got “left out”, as well as a number of changes that came up after the initial designing of the application. As such, I’ve been working hard to get those into the latest version of Color Cloud. In addition, the feedback and feature requests have been coming in, so I made it a point to try and get a few new requested features into this update.

First, I’ve added the check box which enables you to collapse the application down to just the title bar and menu so that you can work on an image or use an application without having to close the application entirely, while retaining the window settings (color preference, reference image and window scaling).

In addition to that, I’ve added the ability to hide the control menu entirely so that the app takes slightly less space while using it, and you get a more direct “connection” between the reference image in Color Cloud and the image you are editing. You do this using the “Hide Controls” option in the Color Cloud menu (Mac) or the Help menu (PC). Re-enable the menu the same way. I have also eliminated the border around the reference image so it fills the application. On a PC, the frame around the application is retained, on a Mac it now floats with no borders. Again, slightly less cluttered and a better connection between your image and the reference image.

Lastly, by request, I have added the ability to scale the application both 15% smaller all the way up to almost 70% larger, which makes the application easier to fit onto your screen, regardless of the size or resolution. Plus it helps to get a larger comparison as necessary.

Things I’m still working on include the ability to load your own images into the application, which will come in a future update.

Check out Color Cloud and try the demo: www.ModifiedPhotoGraphics.com/color-cloud/

Due to all of the time spent on the sites and application, I’ve had to postpone releasing the Adobe Photoshop Actions until I can make some changes to clean up the functions and to create proper tutorial videos on how to use each one. However, the Color Cloud™ application is nearly ready to release (hopefully before October) and meets or beats all of my initial expectations for the application. Having spent MANY YEARS as a professional color technician for multiple professional labs around the country, I found myself looking for an application that would allow me to work in the way that we do at professional labs. Despite my expert level of color judgement, the chromatic adaptation of our eyes (ability to “adjust” incorrect colors to what we know) caused me to have less-than-great color and consistency when correcting my own images at home. Basically, our eyes “see” what we know the color should be, thus we cannot properly judge the color and exposure correctly, even with a perfectly calibrated display. This problem is solved with the Color Cloud™ application which “floats” above Lightroom, Photoshop, Aperture or any other application, allowing us to make comparisons to known good color and exposure skin tones as well as other sample images so that we waste less time, have fewer “surprise” images and in turn our CLIENTS are more satisfied which makes us happy and rich. (At least we hope so.)

I will have a demo video up of the application very soon, please check back here for that YouTube link.

Needless to say, that is what this video tutorial is about. Although it’s not my very best work, I felt it was a worthy image and I was working on it already since I captured this image just the night before.

On to the video!

As I mentioned before, I LOVE to do HDR captures and find that I can really push the limits of “reality”, sometimes I prefer to push the limits of a single exposure to get the most realistic image possible without any chance of getting a “fake” look out of it. (Even with the best HDR software and techniques, sometimes it’s difficult to make a realistic end result.)

As always, for the best quality watch in full-screen 720p HD mode.

The first video for today is a tutorial covering how to correctly balance color using a ColorChecker Passport or any other white balance target, including reasons behind why you should not balance using the dress, suits or other objects with unknown color tones. As well as how to quickly apply these settings to a group of images. I also cover basics of the histogram and highlight/shadow clipping warnings in Lightroom, what they mean and how to correct for it.

Click through for the second video plus a link to more freebies!

And for today’s second video post, I do a typical retouch on an image including blemish removal, tone down eyelids, skin softening, plus a bonus look at one of a few upcoming actions that I will be selling later this year.

As for the actions, I hope to have a website up later this spring and will offer paid downloads with in-depth video tutorials for each action. Look for discounts for more announcements on this later this spring including more samples and other details.

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One last thing I would like to share today is a very nice freebie courtesy of onOne Software. Along with the “lite” versions of some of the onOne software applications, they are now offering downloads for COMPLETELY FREE templates and layouts for albums, photo books and other products. As well as backgrounds, “widgets” and other design-it-yourself parts. All of which are very high quality.

Get the free downloads at: http://www.onOneSoftware.com/free
Please note, you will need to register a free account with them to access downloads.

Everyone has their own personal preference on what is “good color”. Some people prefer warmer skin tones and overall deeper, richer colors. (This is my own personal preference.) While others may prefer cooler skin tones with little or no yellow or red cast or low contrast bright images or very over saturated color or who knows! This is why learning to correct your color to your preference is ideal as nobody but yourself can get the color exactly how you want it and save a few dollars on lab fees for color correction.

Then again, some people wouldn’t know what good color is if it hit them in the head. Let’s be honest…. If that person is you, you can read on but you are probably better off sending your files to the lab as-is. Bad corrections can sometimes be more damaging than sending files with poor color straight out of the camera.

What it takes to correct color:

Although I don’t want to discriminate, if you have a color vision deficiency or otherwise poor color perception, doing your own color corrections is probably a bad idea. If you cannot see the “whole picture”, your adjustments may be more damaging than they do good. The good news is, if you have poor color perception but no actual color blindness, you can still use a reference image as a target to “aim” your color corrections towards. And to be honest, most if not all professional color technicians in labs use a “Lab Standard” image to help correct for skin tones and to aid in making consistent color from image to image and order to order. Don’t be ashamed to keep an image on your desktop as a reference and load it for comparisons as necessary. (For what it’s worth, I have several reference images I use for different types of skin tones and for black & white files.)

Skintone Reference Example

So you’re not sure where your color perception falls? Check out my post “How well do you see color?” which includes a link to an online version of the Farnsworth-Munsell 100 Hue Test hosted by X-Rite. However, the online test is somewhat flawed that it cannot be properly administered within the standard time limits under calibrated lighting like the physical FM100 test. And it doesn’t take into consideration monitor accuracy either. But it is a good starting point and you would likely score similar when taking a properly administered test. (I’ve taken both the actual proctored test and the online version of the test and have scored perfect in both but feel that the actual test is much better though more difficult.)

Now that we have that covered, we can get to color correction…. Or can we? Lets not forget about the monitor. Your monitors calibration is as critical if not more critical than your own color perception. After all, if you have perfect color perception but your monitors calibration is considerably wrong, you may not know this and could be making the color worse or making other unnecessary corrections to the images. I’ve covered this multiple times in the past and can’t stress enough how important it is to properly calibrate your display using a high quality device and software. (I personally own a ColorMunki and a Spyder 3 but prefer the Spyder 3 with ColorEyes Display Pro software which is sold separately.)

Moving on, assuming we have perfect color vision and a perfect color calibrated monitor, let’s get correcting color.

First off, in order to properly correct for color we need to have the correct exposure. However in the digital world, due to limitations of current imaging sensors and to give myself a little extra headroom for bright highlights and details, I do tend to expose about 1/3 to 1/2 stop low when working with mixed or uncontrolled light. (In the studio I have more control over light and the speed of things so I will generally meter and expose properly.) This helps save any chance of blowing out detail that can not otherwise be recovered. (Such as details on a wedding dress.) However in comparison, it is SIMPLE to bring the exposure back to “normal” with processing and still retain those highlight details. Just remember to correct for your exposure BEFORE making any corrections for color. This applies both if you shoot in RAW or JPEG and regardless of which software you prefer to use. You cannot properly judge color if the image is too light or too dark. Just a thought…

An example of blown out skintones. This cannot be recovered.

As of right now I prefer to do the majority of my file processing in Adobe Lightroom since I can quickly access, compare and easily copy and paste corrections between batches of files. Since I work primarily in camera raw, I can make a considerable amount of adjustments within Lightroom to that raw data with no risk of permanent changes to the images. (All of your corrections in Lightroom can be undone.) However, a good raw work flow starts at the camera. Starting with a custom white balance is ideal for getting good color captured to begin with, but it also makes for less headaches down the line as the color will remain more consistent from image to image compared to using an auto white balance mode. If you can’t make a custom white balance, you can switch the white balance to a preset that matches the conditions you are working in to get more consistent color that way as well. And still in camera, getting a proper exposure is critical to good color as well but I will cover that a little more later.

Once my files are in Lightroom, I will decide which custom camera profiles I want to apply to which images, typically either as a whole for the session or in batches depending on the images and what conditions they were captured under. This is of course optional and would only apply if you have a custom camera profile or have downloaded camera profiles that you wish to use to emulate built-in camera modes. Personally, I prefer making my own profiles which I find always look considerably better than the default profiles and can compensate for even the worst lighting conditions. Read more about making camera profiles in “Color Checker Passport does EXTREME color correction”.

Now I will quickly skip through my images and decide if any need any major adjustments to exposure or not. Ideally I had the exposure dialed in during the session so the images should already be consistent but I will try to even out any stray frames that are under or over exposed. I want the images all properly exposed and adjusted to my preference before I move on. One trick you can use with the Exposure slider in Lightroom is to show the clipping by holding down the Option key (on Mac) or Alt key (on PC) and this will help you visualize what areas of the image may have blown out highlights due to overexposure. This trick also works with the Recovery slider (areas of overexposure) as well as the Blacks slider (clipped shadows).

This “show clipping” feature indicates where and what colors are being “clipped” or maxed causing less detail and possibly color artifacts to be present in those areas. Ideally we want to keep maximum RGB values under 240 (about 95% in Lightroom) but sometimes that isn’t possible. This also varies by color space since the RGB value 255,0,0 in sRGB is only 219,0,0 in AdobeRGB and to really be confusing it maps to 179,70,26 in ProPhotoRGB. *HUH?* Yep, but we’ll cover that some other time. Right now I just want good color regardless of which color space I am using. This Option/Alt key trick can also be done in Photoshop when adjusting the shadow and highlight sliders in Curves and Levels.

The next step in Lightroom would be to either load a shot with my white balance target or Color Checker Passport and double-check my white balance (or fix it assuming it wasn’t set correctly to begin with). This should neutralize the image for the most part. However this neutral image may now look to sterile and boring. So after I copy those settings to a few images, I will often manually adjust the white balance slightly warmer. (Using my skin tone reference image to help me guide the skin tones to a natural level overall.) Naturally this will vary depending on your personal preference and the image itself. For example, you may want to warm up wedding photos or a portrait but it would be better to leave product photography very neutral and more true color.

With the camera profiles applied, exposure now correct and white balance tweaked to preference, I will either tweak the curves to increase contrast or adjust the Blacks slider control. Again paying attention not to blow out any highlights or darken the shadows in areas I may want detail still. And lastly I may decide to add some Vibrance or Saturation beyond my default import settings but using both in moderation as too much can result in blown out skin tones that are difficult to fix later. Remember, when working in Lightroom, very bright and vivid colors can often go out of gamut once files are saved in a smaller color space (such as sRGB) for printing at your lab.

And lets not forget the Adjustment Brush. Probably my favorite and most used tool in Lightroom. Once you learn to use the adjustment brush properly, it let you work wonders on images. Watch some of my Lightroom videos at YouTube ModifiedPhoto YouTube Channel for more tips on how to use the adjustment brush to its potential.

Personally, I find color correction in Lightroom to be very quick and easy since I can tweak one image in detail and apply it to many in only a few steps. This makes getting consistency between images very simple and it is much easier and faster to process the camera raw files in batches than it is to process JPEG or TIFF files one at a time in Photoshop. However, for those occasions…. Read on.

In Photoshop, we have a number of tools for adjusting the image including Curves, Levels, Color Balance, Brightness/Contrast and Hue/Saturation among other less used tools (Shadow/Highlight and Exposure). Of those listed, I tend to use Curves and Levels the most for adjusting the density or “exposure” of the image and Color Balance and sometimes Curves for adjusting the COLOR the most. And of course if I need to add saturation I might touch the Hue/Saturation sliders but I have other methods to boost color that I like better depending on the image and subject matter. (See “Richer Color Without Saturation” for details and a video on the technique.)

A quick overview of the “tools”:

Each has its own advantages so everyone should learn how to use all of the tools provided to get the best out of our images. I prefer using Curves to boost contrast as I can easily dial in just the right amount of highlights, mid tones and shadows and if I wish, I can use the layer mask to vary those edits across the image. And remember earlier the trick in Lightroom with the Option/Alt key? It works the same in Curves when adjusting the black or white point sliders. (Or you can also turn on clipping with the “Show Clipping” check box.) Also the nice thing with curves is the fact that by not moving the end points, the highlights and shadows can remain “locked” in place so you are not clipping colors like you can when using Levels. Another trick with Curves is by moving the cursor over the image with the Curves window open, you can hold the Command key (Mac) or Control key (PC) and click a spot on the image. This will add a control point on the curve that directly corresponds to the RGB value clicked in the image. (This really helps if you want to target a specific color range to adjust or lock down.) I do sometimes use Curves to adjust color but keep in mind the adjustments are VERY SENSITIVE and even the slightest tweak to the curve can result in very strong changes to the color overall. Tip: You can use the arrow keys to move a selected control point around in Curves with a lot more accuracy and control.

Now on to Levels. Again, we can use the Option/Alt key trick when moving the black or white point sliders around to check for clipping. This is important as you don’t want to lose color detail in skin tones, otherwise you may end up with a really messed up file and your prints will suffer the consequences. As with Curves, I use Levels mostly for adjusting density and less for tweaking color. Although I do sometimes use the dropper tools in Levels, I find they often result in very bad changes to photographs. They do work nice when I want to quickly clean up a scanned document however. (I rarely use them and don’t advise using them unless someone knows of some other secret trick to make them dance around and do awesome things.)

And now to the my favorite adjustment and probably the least used by most people: Color Balance. Honestly, I rarely see people properly utilizing these controls, probably due to a lack of understanding of how they work. Basically the sliders are Cyan/Red, Magenta/Green and Yellow/Blue. The reason they are paired up like this is because the colors Red and Cyan offset each other. For example, if your image appears to have a red cast, you can increase the cyan level and it will neutralize some of that red color. And if your image seems too blue, you add yellow to compensate. Although these colors don’t appear to be directly across on a color wheel, trust me, this is how it works and that is all we need to know. Needless to say, it takes some time to get used to the Color Balance sliders but once you do, it makes perfect sense and you can quickly and easily compensate for bad color by eye.

I highly suggest learning to use Color Balance for corrections.

What about the Brightness/Contrast and Hue/Saturation controls? Clearly these are self-explanatory but other than for a small boost in saturation or for other creative effects, I don’t use these controls as often as the Curves, Levels or Color Balance. But that doesn’t make them any less useful. Clearly some of my personal favorite “duotone” actions use the Hue/Saturation adjustment layers specifically for the colorize option.

Hey, lets not forget about Layer Masks!! Again, probably one of my most used tricks in Photoshop is the Layer Mask. I can easily make quick overall corrections to an image using Adjustment Layers or make targeted corrections by adding a Layer Mask to hide or reveal just the areas that I want the adjustments to apply corrections to. For example, a color cast on what should be a white wedding dress. No problem, add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer, turn down the saturation 30-50% or until the dress now looks more neutral and white (but not gray… so don’t turn the saturation all the way down) and then using the Layer Mask for that Adjustment Layer, fill it with black to hide everything and then paint in white to reveal only the areas of the dress you want the lowered saturation. Merge down and then save. This should take only seconds to perform spot color corrections to fix problem areas that your lab cannot correct for. (Without paying a retouching fee.)

Get on with it!

Alright, here is where the fun starts… Again, we need to correct for the exposure before touching any color sliders. Remember, proper density (exposure) is KEY to good color. This is a good reason to get the exposure correct in the camera to begin with. Needless to say, that doesn’t always happen and even if it meters right, sometimes the image may still need a little boost on the screen. And as I mentioned earlier, I tend to under expose slightly on purpose to save highlights. It is possible to reasonably recover images 2 to 3 stops underexposed but just a half stop overexposed and bright details as well as skin tones may be lost and are difficult if not impossible to be recovered.

Checking the histogram is a good way to verify exposure but it is also confusing and often leads us to believe the exposure is good (or bad) when it is not. So here is a trick I recommend to check exposure on skin tones in portraits, but this can be applied to any object in any image. The “Facemask Histogram” technique isn’t my own to claim but I do utilize it now and then to double-check my exposure in tricky files. Read more about the Facemask Histogram in “Histograms lie, unless…”

Using Curves or Levels, I will enable clipping or hold the Option/Alt key and bring the shadow slider up until I start to show clipping and then check. If I’m not losing details that I want to keep, I may continue to increase the slider until the point I want black to nearly black starts to clip and then back it off a bit. Then I repeat the same with the white point slider with special attention to skin tones. If red or yellow clipping warning starts to show up anywhere on the skin, bring the slider back about 5 or 10 points or else the skin tones will begin to discolor and lose detail. You can adjust the mid tones to preference. Obviously everyone has their own preference on color and some people like a deeper, richer looking image while others want a lighter, less contrasty look. Depending on how you treat the middle slider (Levels) or the middle of the curve (Curves) will result in a different “feel” to the image. Of course if you want less contrast you can back off the black and white point sliders as well and edit to taste.

Depending on how bad the exposure of the image is to begin with, I may need to boost the brightness more still which I prefer doing in Curves. I will bring one or two points up in the middle making sure that they form a smooth curve still. In an extreme case of exposure problems I may even resort to using the Shadow/Highlight controls (Image > Adjustments > Shadow/Highlight) This takes a little experimenting to get used to the controls (if using the advanced controls), otherwise you can just adjust the basic controls to help bring back some of the details before moving on.

Adding MORE color to BAD color just makes MORE BAD color.

Now our exposure should be better and the image should have more life. If it has too much contrast, you can tone down the corrections you just made by using the Fade command (Edit > Fade), lowering the opacity of the adjustment layer or by adjusting the sliders again slightly. (This is where working with adjustment layers is ideal.) So on to color. First mistake most people make is to go straight to Hue/Saturation and dial that baby up to +45 or so. Now I can’t say that may not be necessary at times but adding MORE color to BAD color just makes MORE BAD color. And just about nothing is worse than way over saturated “bad” color.

So instead add a Color Balance layer and experiment. If you scroll back up a few lines you might re-read the sentence regarding how it works and then take a look at your image and ask yourself what you see. In the “Before” example image below, I see a cyan/yellow tint overall causing the image to look dingy and bland. If the color cast isn’t obvious at first, try looking at the parts of the image you know should be neutral or close to neutral. I know that the white tutu should be very bright blueish-white and that the wall is a slightly off-white. Once I identify the color cast, I can now adjust accordingly. I know that adding blue with the Color Balance sliders will offset yellow and adding red will offset cyan. This is where having a good reference image comes in handy. You can load the reference and make comparisons side by side. The reference should be something that fits YOUR personal preference for color and know that this image (density and color) prints come out to your liking and standards. Then make further adjustments as necessary to tweak the color to resemble the reference image.

Color Corrections – Before & After (Click Image for larger view)

You can also use Curves or Levels to adjust color but I find that I can usually get the color to the point I am happy with it by using only the Color Balance controls. If I just need to make a quick overall correction, I may change to a specific color channel and adjust the curve slightly but I find that fine tuning the color to be more difficult with Curves and Levels.

In the “After” example, I added a Curves layer to tweak both the density and contrast. I then tweaked the color using the Color Balance sliders. I added another Curves layer to slightly brighten up her face only by using a layer mask. And a third Curves layer to make an overall correction to the color of the wood floor which was picking up a slightly stronger color cast from the fluorescent overhead lights, again using a layer mask to only adjust the areas I wanted. Overall the corrections took less than one minute including the extra corrections to the face and floor.

Now that we have the exposure and color tweaked and the image now looks good and natural, this is where we can start to get creative. Remember, use adjustment layers with layer masks to do spot corrections such as fixing an odd color cast on a wedding dress or correcting for bright or dark spots in the lawn on a family portrait and so on. BUT I don’t even begin retouching an image until the above steps are done and I save adding saturation for last as bringing out the CORRECT color, density and contrast will often result in more saturation naturally and I won’t need to as much if any in the end. Once we are satisfied with all of the above corrections, it’s time to merge layers. You can go ahead and flatten the adjustment layers used and save the file out as you normally would.

As I have said, I find that I can get a better correction quicker working in Lightroom but I do often take an image into Photoshop for making spot color corrections and for other creative effects. Or when someone brings me an old photo or poor quality file to correct, I will typically do those corrections in Photoshop on layers to selectively correct areas of the image. In the end, learning to use the controls and having a good reference image handy can make all the difference between good and bad color.

Lets review:

1. Good color STARTS in-camera by using a custom white balance or by properly selecting a white balance mode. And by capturing images with proper exposure.
2. Build and use a custom camera profile. (Buy a ColorChecker Passport and read my blog for tips on how to use it, it’s worth the time and money!)
3. Calibrate your monitor. A bad calibration can cause you to make unnecessary changes.
4. Use a reference image to help adjust skin tones correctly.
5. Learn to use the tools in Lightroom and Photoshop to get the best color out of the image.

Hey! What about the video? I didn’t read all that. I just scrolled down to see the video!

Alright, here they are. Due to limitations of the length of video uploads to Facebook, I have split it into a Lightroom segment and a Photoshop segment. Please watch both as both will cover the tips and tricks necessary to correct color effectively in each program. Also don’t forget all of my videos are in HD so please click to watch in full screen and switch playback to HD mode for the best quality.

Color Checker Passport – Custom Camera Profile

The color here is simply unacceptable, even with the custom white balance I generated in-camera using the neutral gray target on the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport. (It is VERY bad without the custom white balance.)

To fix this, I exported the camera raw file, in this case it was a Nikon NEF file, from Adobe Lightroom into an Adobe DNG file which is their own “digital negative” raw file format. It retains all of the original raw data as the NEF file but essentially “translates” that into an Adobe friendly format for all of their other software. Once exported as a DNG file, I opened the Adobe DNG Profile Editor and then used the Chart tab to place the colored dots onto the corresponding colored squares on the ColorChecker chart in the image. (Download the Beta version of the Adobe DNG Profile Editor Here.)

Normally, this is all that needs to be done to create a custom camera profile… Except in this case, it gives me an error message instead. That message is telling me that it cannot find the gray squares to set the correct white balance and generate the custom camera profile. So we have to tweak the calibration some in order to get it close enough for the system to take over.

Adobe DNG Profile Editor – Color Matrices Tab

This means we have to switch to the Color Matrices tab and tweak the white balance calibration to get the color closer to neutral before the custom chart can be generated. These sliders allow the white balance to be adjusted outside of the normal range and to tweak each color channel independently. As you can see in the screen capture, I made significant adjustments to the calibration by eye to get the color of the chart closer to the actual colors. We don’t need to make it perfect, just closer to neutral so that the software can properly generate the profile.

Now that we have the color manually adjusted to be within the limits of Adobe camera raw, we can then create the proper color tables for the custom camera profile. Now go back to the Chart tab and it will then automatically create the color tables. Once that is done, simply export the DNG profile (File > Export *camera model* Profile) and it will save that profile into the proper location for Adobe products to find it. Now re-load Lightroom or Photoshop and it will allow you to select the custom camera profile from the drop down menu on the Camera Calibration tab.

With the new camera profile selected, use the white point dropper tool and select the neutral square in the image and it will then correct the color to nearly match the actual color of the ColorChecker Passport target.

ColorChecker Passport – After Custom Camera Profile

Anyone who wants to play along, here is the DNG file used to create the custom profile.
(Right Click: Save Link As) Amber_Street_Lamp.dng (23.3mb Adobe DNG format.)

And for those who prefer to watch my tutorial videos:

Don’t forget to watch the video in Full Screen HD mode for the best quality.

Here are some tips on how to get the most out of your lab and get back the best prints every time. Including press-printed products that many labs now offer.

Get prints that match:

It’s not difficult get a print that looks fairly close to your screen from most good labs. However this is assuming your screen is properly calibrated. If you order uncorrected prints from your lab and frequently get prints back that are lacking contrast, dark, dull or overall the wrong color, chances are it’s not your labs fault. (I know, it’s easier to blame them… After all, it looks great on YOUR screen right?) This ALSO applies if you are having issues matching the color from your own in-house printers but those have multiple factors that could be set up wrong causing your headaches. I’ll go into that another time.
In any case, if your prints come back dark, dull or lacking contrast there is a good chance that your screen may actually be set too bright or with the contrast level too high causing your images to look very bright and “good” on your screen but as soon as the prints go to the lab (or your own printer) they look terrible. This is because the file itself IS dark and lacking contrast.

So your screen is calibrated you say? How do you know the calibration is correct? The software told you so right? The problem with most display calibration tools these days is the fact that they dumb down the software to make it easy to use but hide all of the advanced controls away so you can’t truly calibrate your display. On top of that, some display simply lack the accuracy to be calibrated properly even with an automated calibration tool. (Forget about editing on most laptops, the screens lack the proper color accuracy.)

Although it sounds like a lot of trouble, here is one way to help you find out if the brightness and contrast level on your display are causing your printing problems. Send a file to your lab or own printer with the corrections that look “good” on your screen. When you get that back, mark the brightness and contrast settings on the front of the print with a permanent marker. Now lower the contrast and brightness level of your display to default or below (usually the half way mark). If your screen is already at half way or below, lower the settings more. Now correct the file to look good on your screen and send the file again. When you get that back, mark down the settings again and repeat until you find the brightness and contrast of the prints match the screen well. (To save time, you can correct the files and save each with a unique name and have them all printed at once and match them up with the back printing on the image when you get the prints back from your lab.)

The culprit here is the fact that most desktop LCD display are capable of brightness levels of 350 cd/m2 or greater (my LaCie goes to 400 cd/m2 which is just short of blinding at full tilt). We only want and need about 1/3 of that brightness or roughly 100-120 cd/m2 depending on your working environment. Yet most display come with the brightness and contrast levels set well over that and many of us just go with the default settings since they make everything look bright and snappy. (Except our prints which look dark and dull in comparison.)

Another very possible problem could in fact be the fact that the file is in AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB and the lab is expecting sRGB files. Although it doesn’t sound like a big problem, the labs software often doesn’t take this into account. (As the lab throwdown results showed.) This could also be caused by saving the file without the profile embedded. THIS IS IMPORTANT!! Be sure all images are ALWAYS saved with the correct profile embedded, even for the web since most new web browsers are now color managed. Although it doesn’t seem like a problem on our end, sRGB and AdobeRGB have a vastly different color gamut and even the gamma is different which will cause the color, contrast and density to shift in strange ways.

Here is a little graphic that should help you dial in the brightness of your display. Their should be a noticeable separation between each box, except perhaps the two darkest which may or may not have separation depending on your display. (Even my high-end display has trouble with dark colors between gray 0 and 4. It’s OK though, very little detail is visible in a printed areas that dark anyhow.) But you should be able to see a difference between all of the boxes from 5 to 255 for sure.

First set the brightness control so that the box labeled 5 can be distinguished from 0 and 2. Next use the contrast control to make the 255 box as bright as you can (you may need to lower the contrast later if it is too bright still) while still being able to easily see the adjacent box. You may need to go back and readjust the brightness control again if you’ve lost the separation between the darkest boxes. This should give you a good starting point for the brightness and contrast of your display that will allow for better print matching.

After setting the brightness and contrast controls on your display, you may want to re-profile your display using your hardware calibration device such as a Spyder, Huey, Eye-One or ColorMunki. (I suggest writing down your display settings FIRST just in case the software uses DDC controls to try to one-up your new display settings.)

Once your screen is at the correct brightness and contrast and the color is calibrated well, your uncorrected lab prints should closely match the screen and make it easier for you to do corrections to your own files as well as save some money by using economy print rates. (Or have piece of mind knowing that what you’ve sent the lab has good color and exposure before they work their magic on the files.)

Try a template:

I’ll be the first to admit that I am a good photographer and a terrible graphic designer. In fact, MOST photographers are poor at graphic design and even fewer understand specific “rules” when it comes to proper design for printing. I’m not going to go into details about design here. But I will say that if you want to save yourself a lot of headaches, reprints and possibly a call from your lab asking for a redesigned album page or photo cover, read the guidelines provided by your lab and ask if they have templates available for download. Many labs offer free templates online for photographic hard cover albums and books and most have written guidelines available for pages.

For example, a cover layout sounds pretty straight forward at first but it isn’t quite that simple once you consider it. Custom photographic albums and press printed books are often printed slightly over sized and trimmed down to the final size during binding. This means any text, graphics, images or borders close to the edges may get trimmed into and/or be trimmed slightly uneven in the final book. I suggest avoiding thin borders and be sure pages are full bleed whenever possible. (meaning the images go edge to edge) Some labs may want pages to have a small margin built-in (as much as 1/4″ all the way around) while some may want pages to be designed at the exact final size. Check with your lab for details on page layout guidelines.

As for custom hard cover books or albums with photographic covers, it is easy to think the cover image for a 10×10 album should be 10×20, but that doesn’t account for the spine, spine hinge, edges of the hard cover or overlap around the cover on all sides. Even a soft cover book has a thin spine that adds to the width of the cover slightly. See the template below for an example of this. Only the green areas are the front and back cover but everything but the red areas will be visible on the final book or album.

Here is an example of a photo cover template from H&H Color Lab for an 8×10″ hard cover press printed book. Don’t forget to use templates with the correct orientation. A horizontal book will have the spine on the short side while a vertical book will have the spine on the long edge. In this example, the cover template is for a vertical 8×10 book. The green area of the template is the area that will be on the flat areas of the front or back covers. The light blue is the spine hinge area which may have folds or slight wrinkles due to the book folding at that point. Avoid important text or graphics in these areas. (Including faces and other parts of the cover images that may end up in this area depending on your design.) The dark blue area will end up on the spine of the book. This area is safe to place text and graphics but be sure the font isn’t too large for the spine. The yellow area will be wrapped around the edges of the cover. If you use a photo for the entire front or back of the cover, I suggest the image wrap all the way past the yellow area but be sure heads, hands or other important details do not fall into the yellow area. And lastly, the red area will be cut off or covered by the binding on the inside of the front and back covers.

Some other design tips:

Consider Professional Corrections:

Having your lab do your color corrections has an up side and a down side. On one side, the thought is “How does the lab know how I want my color?” And honestly, they generally don’t know what you want BUT they are going by a lab standard color for skin tones and use best judgment when working on images that don’t fit into that category.  But on the flip side, the technicians at the lab are highly skilled and color correct hundreds or even thousands of images for professionals every day. This is what they do and generally as long as you don’t send very poor quality files or have an unusual color preference, the resulting color corrections should be fairly good. The technicians are also working on monitors that are checked for calibration on a regular basis and matched to the printers. The technicians also proof check the prints under calibrated lighting before they are finished and shipped. Also, going back to the calibration discussion earlier, it is truly hard to know if your display is calibrated properly or not even if the software says that your display is calibrated. I’ve found that I can calibrate both of my display and get a VERY different result, yet the software is perfectly happy with the color in its mind. (Though through experience I can see that it isn’t correct.) I’ve since switched to a much more advanced application for very accurate calibration with my Spyder3 device but it still has its quirks.

If you feel you are good at doing your own corrections or have special color treatments you use on images frequently, by all means go with the economy service. But those who don’t sit down and edit every image before sending it to the lab really might find that the labs corrections are worth the slight difference in cost.

Not sure what to expect? Some labs actually offer a reference image that is used by the technicians as the “lab standard color” for skin tones, density and contrast. You can request this file and/or a print from most labs to use to help guide your own color corrections or to get a better idea what to expect from a corrected file. Some labs will even allow you to make a custom preference to suit your own taste if you find that the lab standard color is too warm, too cool or you prefer richer, deeper color perhaps. A good lab will work with you in this process so that your prints are always to YOUR standard.

Using your lab for color corrections also makes for a slightly quicker work flow on your end as you can process your images on your end and do any retouching and editing and then send the files and let the lab handle final color corrections saving you the time to do more work that you would prefer to be doing.

Remember the labs limitations. As I mentioned above, flattened composites can limit the ability for the lab to do corrections as not all of the photos in the composite may need the same corrections and any background images or textures and other graphic elements may also shift in color with the overall corrections done by the lab. (Generally the technician will avoid doing corrections to the files that will result in changes that may greatly alter the look of the design.) Also, most labs DO NOT do corrections in an image editing program like Photoshop so the corrections to the files (composite or not) are on an overall basis. If you want selective color adjustments or need to do anything like a custom dodge or burn, you should do it on your end before submitting the files OR request custom art to be done which is generally an extra charge. The technicians don’t generally have access to tools to do more complicated corrections on their end. (Some labs may offer a custom print service which may include alterations like this but again, this is generally an extra cost over a standard print. For example, when I was a digital tech at Colormark in Phoenix, AZ we offered a custom print service in which we did extra corrections to the files to get the very best prints for the customer, but the price was much higher than a standard digital print.)

Also, consider the fact that the lab is working with a JPEG or TIFF file that only has so much color information available before the image quality degrades. For the best prints, avoid sending files with very bad color casts or very poor exposure. Problems like blown-out whites or blocked-up shadows CAN NOT be corrected, even by your lab. Ideally you should fix these problems on your end first if you have the camera RAW files. (or with careful retouching) Also, problems like sensor dust, dirty floors (in a high key image), uneven lighting, spotty light, very strong contrast and other problems also can not be fixed by your lab. (Unless you pay for custom retouching which can fix some of these problems.) As a professional photographer, it is our job to get the best capture including proper lighting and correct exposure, you shouldn’t use your lab as a crutch to cover for poor technique or lack of skill. (Whoa, did he just say that? Yep!)

However, if you have to error, I suggest you error slightly towards under exposed. Generally a little lost shadow detail and a tiny bit more noise is easier to correct for and much more forgiving than a blown out highlight or funky skin tones due to maxing out a color channel, thus lost color detail, frequently in skin tones which causes ugliness of all sorts and can not easily be corrected.

Under exposed, but still fixable. This CAN be corrected with some loss of shadow details.

Correct exposure. This needs little or no correction by your lab and will print very well.

This is over exposed with obvious loss of detail. Overall this cannot be corrected very well. Avoid sending this!

A strong color cast can be corrected sometimes, but not perfect. Avoid this by using the correct white balance in-camera.

Print a sample:

Most labs will allow for a significant discount for products used as a studio sample. This is both a good way for you to get to know the limitations of the products as well as any design features you may want to take advantage of. The lab wants you to spend your money on these products so they will gladly give you a discount on a sample if you just ask. This also makes it easier to fill the walls of your studio with beautiful prints at a much lower cost. And as above with products like photo cover coffee table books and such, this makes it easy to test out your design skills and templates for placement of things like your studio logo and such so that you don’t make an error on a book for a paying client.

No matter how you look at it, having a sample on hand even just to show a prospective client what they could get is worth the small cost on your part.

I hope this short guide helps aim some people afraid to use a pro lab in the right direction or those who are having difficulty with your lab towards a process to better prints. As always, thoughts and comments are always welcome.

Here is the before and after comparison. This was taken 2 years ago with a Nikon D70 camera and I am editing the NEF (camera raw) file in Lightroom first and then doing some final tweaks in Photoshop.

Before and After Color Corrections

Click through for the video.

And here is the video tutorial:
Don’t forget to click the HD button and go Full Screen for the best quality.

“The Munsell ColorChecker—first produced as the Macbeth ColorChecker in 1976 and still widely known as the Gretag Macbeth ColorChecker—a cardboard-framed arrangement of twenty-four squares of painted samples based on Munsell colors. Its maker Munsell Labs and parent Gretag Macbeth were acquired in 2006 by X-Rite, a color management and colorimetry company.”

Color chart. Wikipedia. Retrieved Dec. 08, 2009, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColorChecker

Today it is used as a reference for color in both film and photography and it continues to be an accepted standard. But original cardboard versions are still quite expensive, large and easily damaged. It also needed to be kept safely in a plastic sleeve and kept out of direct light to avoid bleaching the colored squares. In comes the more durable, extremely compact and multi-talented X-Rite ColorChecker Passport.

X-Rite ColorChecker Passport

The ColorChecker Passport is 3 1/2″ x 5″ plastic compact similar in shape to what a woman might carry in her purse for touching up makeup. (I half expected a mirror inside to fix my hair on-location.) The Passport is also a very thin at less than 3/8″ at it’s thickest point making it easy to find space for this in your camera bag or even in your pocket. As an added convenience, it comes with a very long lanyard with a quick release on the end. This makes it easy to carry around your neck or use the lanyard to hang the Passport somewhere while you frame it for a test photo. The long edge of the case is hinged and has stops that lock into place at several positions including flat or folded backwards so the unit can be set on a level surface. When fully opened, it will stand on its own in just about any position. Setting up a reference shot is quick and easy in just about any situation or location. (Though I do find it hard to open with one hand so you may need two hands free to operate it.)

When you open the ColorChecker Passport, you will see that it includes the standard 24 Munsell color patches on one side, on the other half it includes an additional 8 neutral squares to assist in correct exposure. Four patches are spaced closely from light gray to white and four from dark gray to almost black. These can be used to evaluate your exposure of the ColorChecker. (Or the scene in general if you are using it in a test shot.) If the patches in each group cannot be distinguished from each other, the exposure may be off and you can easily make an adjustment to correct this and try again. (Correct exposure of the chart is necessary for proper profile creation.) Below that it has a white point target with 10 squares that can be used to easily and slightly vary the white point from cooler to warmer. And a color chart wouldn’t be complete without the last 8 squares which include primary and secondary colors. (Both additive and subtractive primary and secondary colors. – Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, Violet, Magenta)

If you haven’t already noticed, the ColorChecker Passport is actually three pieces. The center can hinge either way and on the flip side of the center is a large neutral block for use as a camera white balance target. This is the same exact tone as the neutral gray white point on the ColorChecker side of the card except much larger. This can be used to set a custom white balance in-camera for proper color balance at capture. (More on that another time.) And on the opposite side of the case, it has space to write down your name and the date it was first used. (X-Rite recommends you replace the targets every two years.)

ColorChecker Passport White Balance Target

The ColorChecker Passport also includes its own software which can also be downloaded and used manually with any size ColorChecker for free from X-Rite. The software allows for automated camera profile creation from within Adobe Lightroom for use with Adobe products that support Adobe Camera RAW. If you don’t use Lightroom or have trouble with the automated process, you can also export a camera RAW file to a DNG (also a RAW format) and load that directly into the ColorChecker software and manually generate camera profiles.

Wait, what is a camera profile? Ahh… Well not unlike profiling your display, printer or even specific papers, profiling your camera is just as important of a step in the chain to get proper color from capture to output. Without a camera calibration, the software is only guessing at what the color should look like under that lighting according to very general use color profiles. This would be like asking someone to go buy you red paint at the store when what you really wanted was a deep crimson red. Who knows what they’ll bring back or how close it may be to what you actually wanted. They didn’t have anything to go by so they did their best to guess what you might have wanted. And to make matters worse, different types of lighting have a different spectrum which makes some colors more intense than others. Even with a proper white balance in-camera, this does not properly compensate for odd light sources very well. This is where the ColorChecker and a camera calibration makes everything better.

Currently, not many RAW processing programs allow for camera calibration but I do believe that it will become more of a standard feature as digital photography advances further. However, one of the most widely used vendors for image processing (Adobe) does allow for calibration and even includes its own tools. (More on that below.) Adobe has what it calls the “Camera Calibration” tab under the Lightroom Develop module and inside of the Camera RAW dialog in other applications such as Photoshop. This has a drop-down menu of default camera profiles for the camera used as well as any custom profiles you have created for this camera. This list includes things like ACR 5.x, ACR 4.x, Adobe Standard and any other Adobe created profiles that may apply to your camera model. In my case it also has a list of psudo-Nikon profiles that you can use to emulate the built-in camera modes and/or profiles from Nikons own Capture NX RAW processing software. What we are going to do here is make a profile for a specific condition and it will show up in this list making it easy to access later.

Here is the screen from the X-Rite provided software if you choose to manually generate your own camera profiles from a DNG file. The software is very simple, just a window to drag and drop your file into. It will load and show in the center and attempt to automatically detect the color checker in the frame. I’ve found that even with the color checker nearly filling the frame and in perfect focus, it has a hard time finding it. Perhaps this is just a software bug or perhaps I am simply doing it wrong, either way it is very easy to manually add the points. To do it manually, simply zoom in to the ColorChecker and add a point in the corners where the square brackets are. Once you have all four corners marked, it will display boxes to help you line up the squares better if necessary. Simply drag each corner around until the boxes are properly centered over the squares on your ColorChecker. Once that is done, simply click “Create Profile” and it will ask you to name the profile and it will do everything else. If your exposure on the target is off too bad or the squares are not properly lined up, the software will give you an error message. Otherwise it will finish and give you a message that indicates you should close and reopen any programs that you will use the profile with and it should show up. (Make sure your profile naming makes sense to you! It will save you a lot of headaches later.)

However, Adobe also provided us with a free tool (downloaded from Adobe) called the DNG Profile Editor. It is currently in Beta form but I find that it works just fine. The Adobe program allows for FULL MANUAL control over the color profiles AND it also allows for automated profile creation using…. you guessed it… a ColorChecker. In fact, it works perfectly with the ColorChecker Passport. Simply go to the “Chart” tab, load a DNG file with your ColorChecker in the frame. Then simply drag the colored dots to the corresponding colored square on your image and click “Create Color Table”. This will give you a fun little chart of each color and even show you a comparison of before and after colors. You can click on the dots to manually edit the sliders for each point or go with the automatic adjustments. Lastly, I suggest skipping straight to File > Export Profile. Again, save the file with a name that makes sense to you later as this will be the name it shows up as within Lightroom and/or Adobe Camera RAW.

What I have found after doing some tests of my own is that the Adobe DNG Profile Editor does a much better job at creating a very good camera profile, even with very unusual lighting such as the warm color temperature CFL (compact fluorescent) bulbs in my kitchen. Here is an example of the ColorChecker next to a QP 201 card and a Kodak gray card. (Keep in mind that the Kodak card is used for exposure reference and is not intended for use as a white balance target.) I generated a custom white balance in-camera prior to taking the picture and metered the lighting with a Sekonic L-558R meter and manually set the camera for the exposure based on the incident readings. Since everyone elses display will vary, this examples will not look the same to you as I see, but I can tell based on my comparisons on the screen and in person is that the version with the Adobe DNG custom camera profile looks the most accurate to the actual tone of the wood when viewed under daylight.

Profile comparison – Profile used on title bar for each image. – Click to Enlarge

I have found some situations that not even a ColorChecker nor a custom white balance can correct for. In fact, the color temperature and spectrum from the street light outside of my home is so unusual that it maxes out the white balance tool before colors even begin to come into range. But for every other lighting I threw at it including mixed lighting, the ColorChecker Passport passes the test (when used with the Adobe DNG Editor).

The question now is, is it for everyone? And the answer to that is mixed. Yes, I would suggest it for anyone who needs a white balance target or those who strive for accurate, matching colors all of the time. If you are a JPEG shooter only, you can still use it as a reference target and for setting custom white balance in-camera. If you are that person who runs around and just takes pictures with little regard to exposure, focus or shoot on auto, this isn’t for you.  If you work with multiple cameras at the same time or are shooting in a mixed light environment, this can save you a lot of headache later as it will allow you to very easily match up the color of multiple cameras even from different brands.

And very detailed information from Adobe on how to use the Adobe Profile Editor: Adobe.com – DNG Profiles : Editor

A little more information on custom camera profiles and a link to download the Adobe Profile Editor: Adobe.com – DNG Profiles : Camera Profiles and DNG Profile Editor

When and how to use it? Watch my videos… Don’t forget to click HD and view full screen for best quality playback.

My video review of the ColorChecker Passport:

How to create a custom camera profile with the ColorChecker Passport:

Click in for more…

Why not just increase the saturation you ask? It is a perfectly fine method and I do often increase the saturation a little bit but it’s easy to go overboard and the drawbacks of going overboard are far worse than having an image with a little less saturation. For one, too much saturation can cause one or multiple color channels to become “blown out” where the color peaks at 255 and loss of detail occurs. This alone can cause unwanted color phenomenon such as color shifting in highlights in skin tones or color halos in whites. Too much saturation with the saturation sliders can also result in unrealistic colors and skin tones which are hard to correct later.

This method also results in a more RICH looking color with good color density and details. This is what I look for in most of my work. (With some exclusions.)

I’m working with a landscape image here rather than a person just to help demonstrate the difference between adding saturation and adding DENSITY.

Our base image. A bit bland still…

Our base image is a beautiful shot off the side of the road in the Painted Desert, part of the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. But I sure do remember more color to the sediment layers, even the pavement was a rich amber-like color. By adding Saturation only, this image gets more color but it’s really still pretty bland. I’m not feeling it yet.

With 45% saturation, we get color but we get banding and lost detail too.

Instead, duplicate the background layer and then add a Curves Adjustment Layer above the Background Copy layer. Drag the curve down some as shown, as it is this should slightly darken the image. Now change the blending mode of the Curves Adjustment Layer to Overlay. (Soft Light also works nicely but with a little bit less zing.) We duplicated the background layer first so that we can merge the Curves layer to the Background Copy layer for the next step. But we may want to mask something out of our new layer later. (You could use snapshots instead but I prefer working with layers so I can save the original image with the edits on layers.)

Now that we’ve added the Curves Adjustment Layer, go ahead and merge that down with the Background Copy layer. Clearly the colors are starting to come out better, but we’ve lost a bit of the shadows and possibly a bit of the highlights as well. To bring those back, we can either selectively mask that back in, paint with history or use a favorite tool of mine known as the Shadow/Highlight tool. (Under Image > Adjustments > Shadow/Highlight…)

In this case, I used the basic settings with 70% Shadows, 20% Highlights. This brought back the detail in the shadows to the point it was when I started and just about all of the detail in the clouds. Now we have a DEEP blue sky and RICH color without touching the saturation at all! And it doesn’t scream “I cranked the saturation to 110%” either.

Of course if you need to, you can use layer masks or other tricks and tools to reveal areas that are too deep and rich or too contrasty as necessary. Or if you are still begging for more, you could even add touch of saturation to the final image if you need or want more color.

Beautiful DEEP RICH Color!

And here is the video tutorial:
Don’t forget to click the HD button and go Full Screen for the best quality.