Last week we went to see a literary discussion. The hosts wore red, and the stage was well lit. However, someone decided to also add blue LEDs, because you can’t have a stage without blue LEDs, right?
In the image below, the LEDs are partly blocked – it’s pretty easy to see on the man’s shirt, as well as on the curtain behind the lady, where her shadow colours the curtain yellow.
It’d be nice to have some colour on the lady’s skin. The man’s beard is not so bright white, either; and he’s not completely grey. Here’s an official photo of them (without blue LEDs…):
This is an interesting one to play with and have opinions about…
My take: There’s no need to drastically remove or “fix” the blues. There’s a lot of it in the scene and this will have been visible at the time. The shadow of the partially blocked blue light would also have been visible. If the goal is to create an RGB neutral result from this image you’re in for a bit of a challenge.
The trouble is, it did not look so badly blue at the scene. The stage looked rather neutrally lit.
Anyway, would you mind to share your sidecar? RT gave me this as the default:
Sure, although there is a caveat: This one uses the not-as-yet implemented Tone Equalizer. Guessing here that you are computer tech-savvy enough to merge that one.
Tricky one. Used the official picture as a reference for spot color correction measurement. Then mostly desaturated blue channel and increased contrast, but the result is by no means perfect.
Nice ! I am quite impressed by what you achieved with Color Calibration module.
Probably a matter of taste, but I would add a little bit more saturation and a tiny bit warmer color balance. So based on your edit, here my take :
This was a real challenge! I feel that since the blue lights were there, there is no need to remove them completely. It’s more about taming them.
darktable 4.2.1:
Thanks. This looks very strange, though. For example the shadows are much brighter than the illuminated surfaces. Check the area around the man’s trousers, as well as that to the (picture-)right of the lady’s knee, or below where her dress falls from her leg.
That’s not surprising, and has nothing to do with your skills: you have a situation with mixed lighting, where different parts of the scene have different illuminants. You cannot “modify” all those illuminants with one white balance setting…
