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Color Question


Mark Aldrich

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Why do my reds look so much more red in pictures than in real life?

 

Mark

Without seeing an example it is hard to say. Here is a guess:

 

Your lighting brings out the reds. Different lighting can "bring out" different colors to different extents. As an example, look at the same paint job under natual, incandecent and florescent lighting. What is your lightsource? Try changing it and see if that makes a difference. You can ameliorate the effects of the light source by, among other things, setting your white balance under the lighting conditions you are using. That will "shift" the colors somewhat to compensate for the lighting effects. My 2 zloty.

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Why do my reds look so much more red in pictures than in real life?

 

Are you talking about looking at digital pictures on a monitor? I was just reading that a typical (cheap) LCD computer screen has really poor color reproduction. Even the high-end "professional" displays need to be calibrated to get the colors "right".

 

Don

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Sorry for not being more descriptive. I have looked at my pictures of the Dragon M51 and member gallery of the PT-76 and the tracks do not look as red in real life as they do in the pictures. I know I am shade blind but my wife says the same thing. Both of these were photographed indoors with the flash providing any additional light source.

 

Mark

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Is the ICC profile of the image file sRGB or Adobe RGB? This can make a big difference. Using sRGB for posting the photo online and Adobe RGB for printing is the norm.

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I have no idea what you just said. The Camera is a Kodak, I use their software to trasfer the pictures, thumbs plus to crop them for size only and then send them to the powers that be.

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Understood. If you're wanting accurate color, a calibrated monitor is step one. Most folks don't want to go to the time and/or effort to do this though. Have you tried manually setting a white point or is this possible with your camera?

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  • 1 month later...

This could be caused by many things, but the culprit may be the "White Balance" that the photograph was taken with. I'll try to briefly explain why.

 

Lighting from different sources burn at different "color temperatures" that affect the digital photos we take. Ordinary light bulbs=yellow/orange, florescent=blue/green, and others have white and varying shades. The human eye corrects this for us, but digital cameras use microprocessors to correct for different light sources; sometimes accurately, other times not. Pocket digital cameras have settings for white balance, but the problem is that most lighting is a blend of sources, from a glass window, to a desk lamp, to a camera flash. Higher-end cameras have custom settings that allow any given light condition to be corrected, but unfortunately the pocket digitals do not offer the same latitude.

 

In your case, although you used your camera flash as lighting, some stray light of the yellow/orange color coming off a room light or open widow could have crept in and the camera incorrectly adjusted the white balance. This may explain the increased richness of reds when the photo is created.

 

What to do about it? Software can correct it, if you have the time and dedication. Pocket digital cameras are limited in their ability to correct white balance, so upgrading to a camera with custom white balance correction will greatly decrease the occurrence. Shooting under controlled lighting will also help.

--

John Robinson

http://www.armorartistry.com

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John,

Thanks. My biggest fear had been that my rust tracks looked that red in person and everyone that saw them was being too nice to tell me. I have been thinking of upgrading my Kodak and this year might be the time.

 

 

Mark

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