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    Help with color correction

    I had a custom jigsaw puzzle made. I asked the puzzle crafter to take some photos of the construction process, which she did. A few of the photos came out with a distinct orange tint. The image is a gingerbread train made into a photo collage. The browns are orange and all other colors have an orange tint.

    Unfortunately, those photos cannot be reshot. I would like to "correct" the colors to get closer to the true colors, if possible.

    The puzzle crafter said the color distortion was probably because of poor lighting.

    I have created a DropBox folder with the original files, some of my attempts to correct them, and some more details.

    Here's link:



    Can anyone suggest a way that I can correct these colors?

    Thanks
    Last edited by Jennifer Murphy; 14.07.2012, 10:04 PM. Reason: Updated the link

    #2
    This is a difficult question because the answer depends on how many photos you have to correct and how much time and effort you are prepared to spend in correcting them. It appears from your dropbox link that you have already spend some time making measurements but to use them in Irfanview you would need to create a custom color profile. Irfanview can apply custom ICC color profiles but creating them is well outside its scope. You would probably need a program like Adobe light room and even then may have to download additional programs from Adobe labs.
    However it is just possible that a color profile is already embedded in your images, so it is worth opening the Zoom/Color management tab under Properties/Settings in Irfanview, Options menu to see if Color management is enabled. If it is not enabled, then check the box, OK and reload in case there is a correct profile already embedded that you could usefully use. If it is enabled, uncheck the box, press OK and reload the image to see if the colors change. It has been known for the wrong color profile to have been embedded.

    Irfanview does not offer H,S,L or "Color cast" corrections (try either Photoscape or Gimp for that, although you may still be disappointed with the results). In Irfanview you can, as you have found, improve the color of the Gingerbread by reducing Saturation in Color corrections, but that also heavily desaturates colors in other parts of the collage. The only suggestion I can offer there is to open the Paint plugin before you do the Color corrections. Then use the Paint plugin Eraser tool with the right mouse button held down to "paint" back those areas that you did not want changed.

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      #3
      Thanks, Mij. It looks like this is beyond my capabilities.

      Comment


        #4
        If you can use Irfanview then I think you would be able to cope with Photoscape, Jennifer. Like Irfanview it is free and does have a more extensive range of color correction tools than Irfanview.

        For example the first image below shows Remove Color cast in action on the "Wrong" part of your image. Editor > Home tab > Bright,Color (dropdown arrow) > Remove Color cast. It can reduce the Orange coloration without affecting other colors as much as reducing Saturation in Irfanview would. You still lose much of the Red color though. The second and third image below illustrate using the Deepen tool to locally paint back colors that have been reduced too much. Editor > Tools tab > Effect brush > Deepen. You will need quite a few brush strokes to fully restore the red color on areas like the driver's jumper but I find it gives better control than using > Deepen - High.
        Attached Files

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          #5
          IrfanView can do this easily

          Hit SHFT-G for Color corrections.
          At lower left is the message "Hint: click into original image (bright areas) to change White Balance."
          Click on something inside the preview window that is *supposed* to be white or gray toned (but has a color cast).
          Voila, entire image is now corrected to make that color color cast free.

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