Imaging Technique Presentation

Chosen Technique - Correcting a snow scene

Moving into winter some of us may head to the snow.

Im going to be demonstrating how to correct colour balance, contrast and lighting issues that some of us may come across when photographing a snow covered scene.

Why does the image result in having colour cast issues?

Your camera's auto light meter will read the snow as a neutral grey tone & its white balance settings can jump out of whack due to the bright lighting conditions, with the snow acting as a second reflector, as such. Most pre-set white balance options don't tend to work in in these conditions, being the main result in the images blue colour cast. So, it is ideal to do a custom white balance. Though not technically ideal, I can show you a photoshop alternative to correcting your snow scene.

So here's the result of an image holding all of these issues within its initial capture

• Selecting your chosen snow scene image, take it into Photoshop, double click the background layer to make it editable, duplicate that layer & turn off the original layer.

• Selecting colour balance in your adjustment layers at the bottom of your layers palette.

• Firstly, I'm going to be working with the images colour balance. Making sure "preserve luminosity" is ticked, keeping the vibrancy within the image & the "midtones" tonal option are selected, we're going to be steering away from that blue cast in the image.

• To do so, I simply pushed the reds up to about +50 taking away from the cyan cast & pushed the yellow down to around 60ish, leaving the magenta / green levels alone.

As you can see some, but not all of the blue cast has been deleted from the image.

• Now staying within the colour balance option & keeping "preserve luminosity" ticked. Toggle to the "highlights" selector. We're now going to be correcting the highlights within the image.

• Again saying away from the magenta / green sliders, I simply pushed the reds up to around +30 & pushed the yellow down to around -25, again minimising more of the blue cast.

• Now working with "levels" on a new adjustment layer, above the histogram select "CYMK" in the drop down menu.

• Move the white slider left to a value of around 230. This will lighten the image.

• Take the mid-grey slider right to a value of 0.84. This will brighten the image.

• Now above the histogram again, select "CYAN" in the drop down menu.

• Move the white slider left to a value of around 220. Also, move the mid-grey slider left to a value of 1.14. This will get rid of the final bits of the blue cast.

The final step is to fix the yellow / magenta cast over the image from getting rid of the blue.

• Again above the histogram select "MAGENTA" in the drop down menu, then proceeding to move the appropriate sliders to rid the magenta cast. Then doing the same for the yellow cast.

Then being left with your final corrected image.

BEFORE & AFTER

References

Tutorial Source

- Digital Photographer Magazine, Issue 90, Image Publishing

Can also be found under Issue 90 at http://www.dphotographer.co.uk/tutorials.php

Image Source

- Off disc included with Digital Photographer Magazine, Issue 90

Photographer - Ron Sutton

Info Source - http://www.digicamhelp.com/how-to/nature/snow/