How do you improve a piggy pink faces with ART?
My camera (Panasoinc) often tends to take pictures with too much of a red cast. RawTherapee had an ingenious tool for this: Vibrance. I opened a curve there and raised the mids, turning the pink into a much more golden brown face - wonderful. Is this tool hidden somewhere or has it disappeared completely?
My current method is: Color/Tone Correction and a mask. This works very well, but is a considerable effort compared to Vibrance in RT.
“This is the way” 
But if you want more convenience, it shouldn’t be hard to write a custom ctl script for that (I’m not interested in doing it though)
Oh, too bad it’s gone. Panasonic photographers in particular, who often suffer from the cold red cast, really appreciated RT’s Vibrance. Why did you leave this option out?
But anyway, I’m a long way from being able to write such a scribt. I can’t do anything like that.
In my distress I have now discovered Color/Tone Correction and a mask and it’s more than great: more effort but great results, a real gain.
ART also has a vibrance tool, although it’s global:
Also, if you need to reverse / neutralize a color cast you can do that with Color / Tone Correction. Not that you’d likely want to do this particular neutralization in practice but it illustrates how it works.
Click the eyedropper on the color wheel:
The Ctrl+click the color (cast) you wish to neutralize. For example this blue:
And ART picks an opposing hue:
The selected color can be adjusted:
If you Ctrl+drag hue is constrained while saturation only changes.
If you Shift+drag saturation is constrained while hue only changes.
You can right-click the color and copy / paste either value. This is useful when you need to exactly match some other area.
The vertical slider can enlarge or reduce the allowable range of saturation change. The reset arrow resets everything back to default. I don’t know if there’s away (e.g.) to reset just the slider. I’ve tried a few key/mouse combinations but haven’t hit upon anything.
Why don’t you continue to use RT? It is still alive though the pace of development is sluggish.
Yes, your question is very good.
Since I have worked with RT for many years and am very satisfied, I really feel very connected to RT.
So why anything else now?
It’s actually the slow development that irritates me, and I fear that it will come to a complete standstill. Then one day it will be a pain to develop images from new cameras with RT.
And in my attempts with ART, I’m finding the same thing as so many: ART is so incredibly intuitive, so simple and logical that I can’t resist the temptation.
My results are not yet significantly better than with RT, but Alberto’s friendly help, his very active further development and his commitment to eliminating all bugs quickly are unique. That’s why I now feel so comfortable with ART. I know very well how dependent we all are on his work, his desire and his well-being - without him, ART would probably come to a complete standstill. But I’m willing to take the risk. What’s more, I won’t forget using RT in a hurry …
Yes, but unfortunately this is much simpler than RT. There you can shift from red to yellow, and this mainly affects the skin tones. A great and very quick way to reduce the piggy pink.
Your method is great and I’ve only just discovered it. I’ve been avoiding masks so far, thought I’d hopefully get through the rest of my days without them. But once I understood the principle, I don’t want to do without them anymore.
And with this method, I can do much more than just move Hue. Also the saturation and the brightness - just great.
Your detailed description is a very good help. Thank you for your commitment.
There are Channel Mixer, Color Equalizer, RGB Curves and Lab Adjustments in ART. Can they be used to correct skin color in an easy and quick way? I’m interested in this topic since I also have sometimes a problem of wrong skin colors.
You might also be able to exploit this
Or use sigmoid and attenuate the red… its a script now… also if you are using the tone curve to set up your image try the different models that are available for sure some are much less “saturating” and might help… one last thing might be to use the adobe dcp file for color for that camera… it’s combination of curve base and look table might be a better starting point for faces and if they have a portrait specific profile you could try that …one last thing is the adobe profile editor is amazing and I am sure you could tweak the standard profile to handle your red… issue… google it and if you can run a windows PC which maybe you do sorry I am drawing a blank…but its an awesome tool… Just a few arrows for your quiver to try in ART…
Hello Todd,
what you’re suggesting sounds interesting - but I can’t get to grips with “Film Simuation” and “Sigmoid” yet. I see all the sliders and I’m just confused. My trial and error has not brought the slightest improvement.
Do you know where I can find information about this tool?
Can you describe in simple terms when and for what purpose sigmoid is used?
Which other tools does it replace and which does it surpass in its capabilities?
Do you use Darktable at all… just look at the sigmoid tone mapper video’s and discussion… I can dig up a recent thread here that introduces the new primaries tools… Perhaps a nuance you likely would or should disable tone curves if using this either in the dcp or in the tone curve sections. You could replicate the smooth preset from DT and see what that gives you…
Also the one colorcast script I think would also work for you…
Edit…one reference…
@s7habo has done a video as well…
The problem with the reddish skin tones has been solved.
The colors of the faces can be improved very effectively with little effort using Color/Tone Correction.
With just a little more effort, you can completely improve the colors in any direction you want, as well as the saturation and also improve the tonal values of the area you have selected with the mask.
It’s simply great, and once you’ve experienced it, you’ll never want to do without it again.
I can’t think of anything else that I would miss about ART. Simply great!
The suggestion to work with sigmoid is interesting, I will familiarize myself with it step by step. But for now I will continue to improve the piggy or salmon red faces with Color/Tone Correction.
If you use a DCP file then you might be able to correct it out of the gate with a custom profile…and you can do it without a color checker… glad you got some success… this free tool is very powerful…
