Happy Fourth of July! I hope you are planning to shoot images of fireworks. You shouldn't have problems with white in that kind of image, but what do you do when you shoot on a white background...and it doesn't look white!
Yesterday I had a discussion with a senior classmate you is
struggling with white balance on some images she shot on a white background.
There are so many details to learn to control all the details in an image when
shooting. Her subject looks great and the color on the subject is great, but
the white background looks a bit yellowish gray. If she does an auto white
balance correction on the image, the color on her subject changes. So how do
you deal with an issue like this?
There is a great tutorial video you can watch from Adobe on
how to adjust tones in Lightroom. It explains a lot about the features in
Lightroom and the multiple ways you can accomplish the same task. You will come
away from this video understanding tone adjustments and how to do them.
I opened a file in Lightroom from a friend (who has given me
permission to use her image, but shall remain anonymous) and followed the
procedures as described to adjust this image. The first image is the original
file sent to me as a jpg. The second image I moved the highlight slider to the
right and adjusted only the highlight colors. This helped give a whiter
background, but she still wanted more, so I created a virtual copy. On the copy
I lowered the slider to include some light tones and adjusted upward until the
back was truly white looking. Now I lost quality in the subject’s skin tones.
Now I knew I could do an easy fix in Photoshop, so exported the original and
virtual copy and layered them in Photoshop, with the virtual copy on top. I
selected the white with the quick selection tool, inverted my selection and cut
the subject out. I did this to a small file, but normally I would soften my
edges using a mask to make sure you couldn’t tell a cut had taken place. And woohoo!
I had the desired look.
This is a great way to learn to use the tool. Try it out!
My final word of advice. When you are shooting on a
white background, use extra lights behind your subject from both side and above
if possible, to blast out the highlights on you background so it looks really
white in your photos.
I'll be out trying to capture some creative photographs tonight. Hope you will too! (Get some extra ideas here: creative firework images.)
