# Realtime True Color vs. Picture Color



## AirstoND (Jun 17, 2011)

I've taken a picture of an orchid that is actually lavender, but in picture below came out slightly purple/blue.

What explanation is there for what happened?


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## Mr. Appleton (Jul 1, 2011)

As we're all quite familiar with over here, different lights have different color temperatures and casts. Your camera will automagically white balance every picture that it takes but the thing is it's not always right. Mixing light sources (fluorescent with sunlight) in a single picture is exceptionally confusing to the camera. 

The picture you've posted is a bit too 'cold' and could be a bit 'warmer'. If you have any post-processing software, like Lightroom or even Picasa perhaps, you can just go and adjust the white-balance for the photo and it should help.


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## Ulupica (Nov 4, 2011)

Another thing to note, besides color temperature, is the way that film, or digital sensors, "see" colors differently than our eyes. 

It is quite common for wedding photographers to have clauses in their contracts that say it may not be possible to color-match the colors of the wedding.

The issue seems to be especially prevalent in the blue/purple end of the color spectrum.

While the color may be correctible in editing software, you may also need to adjust the coloring of the blossoms separately from the rest of the photo.


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## 150EH (Dec 6, 2004)

I would guess it's a question of white balance and you can use a gray card or something like and expodisc to get perfect color from your camera. I don't know what camera you are using but if you can shoot in a raw format and adjust the white balance later it makes it easy but it's always better to get the white balance right in the field if you can. The photo looks beautiful on this end but color reproduction is difficult even for pros because it gets even harder when you start calibrating monitors and fine tuning printer profiles.


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## GraphicGr8s (Apr 4, 2011)

What software do you have for PP?


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## Mr. Appleton (Jul 1, 2011)

Lightroom 3 + Adobe CS4


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## GraphicGr8s (Apr 4, 2011)

The easiest way is to create a hue/saturation adjustment layer. Once you have the flower looking the correct color use a layer mask to hide everything else. That's how I did the one I posted. Took all of about one minute and I know it's a rough mask. With a little more effort you could get it darn near perfect in about 5 minutes. Did you shoot this as a jpeg or raw file?


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## nikonD70s (Apr 6, 2008)

lighting/camera setting/ur photoshop skills/different screens from each peoples computer etc...


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## GraphicGr8s (Apr 4, 2011)

Almost looks like you're trying to test us. Looks like you went into photoshop and added a selective color layer and tweaked the blues. Doing that requires no mask and in this photo will mostly change the color of the flower with minimal effect on the blue jeans. It will affect the little picture behind the orchid but 98.2443% of the people would never notice that.

Overall time for execution? About 30 seconds.


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## AirstoND (Jun 17, 2011)

GraphicGr8s said:


> Almost looks like you're trying to test us. Looks like you went into photoshop and added a selective color layer and tweaked the blues. Doing that requires no mask and in this photo will mostly change the color of the flower with minimal effect on the blue jeans. It will affect the little picture behind the orchid but 98.2443% of the people would never notice that.
> 
> Overall time for execution? About 30 seconds.


 
No games..The lady I was with noticed the same effect on her picture also.


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## GraphicGr8s (Apr 4, 2011)

AirstoND said:


> No games..The lady I was with noticed the same effect on her picture also.


Then just go in and tweak selective color, blues and it is fixed. 
Even when I go to press with blue we have trouble. It wants to go purple. And none of the wholesalers I use will take a chance and give you CMYK numbers for blue. They all say "keep your magenta 30% less than cyan" All well and good put each companies press is different.


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