Handling mixed-color lighting splotches

[Pindy]

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I discovered a really good fix for a particular problem I was having with an M9 photo today that I wanted to share in the hopes that somebody with more experience can tell me why it worked. I have long felt that the M9 does unpleasant things in mixed lighting and high ISOs to skin tones and I've struggled with this constantly when doing color photos with this camera.

 

I was taking this candid in a dark room, with 2 incandescent lamps, some halogen track lighting and three LCD screens. Pretty bad, right? Have a look at this hideous effect of the LCD and halogens mixing:

 

 

Now, after trying lots of other things, I reached for the local adjustment brush in LR4 and set it to temperature. I selected 54 as the temperature, which made it warmer. There are still some things to retouch, but It pretty much melted the purple splotch away:

 

 

Here was the setting:

 

 

If I knew more about lighting, I might have known to do this right from the start. I had always thought that the sensor in the M9 was "failing" to handle the mixed light and giving me unusable (and unfixable) skin tones in certain regions of people's skin. I have failed to make the HSL panel work for me in these situations. Can anybody explain why this worked with so few artifacts? In the before photo, there is such a strong border between the two areas.

[hoppyman]

Thank you for posting clear examples with your discussion. The mixed light sources make it very dfficult to deal with too I'm sure. I've seen this (very rarely) too but in my case actually in open shadow with no mixed lighting at all. Just in a very specific skin tone shadow and at low ISO too.

One of the expert contributors here looked at my examples and found that the effect exists also with other Raw converters. Further the Adobe engineer I asked offered another profile but the effect stil exists.

I think that your local adjustment method looks very promising (my own with different brush adjustments did not work).

I should add a caveat that I have only seen this issue on half a dozen frames from thousands myself.

[Pindy]

Thanks for your reply. It makes me curious to go back to other photos that suffer from this and try the same technique.

[tobey bilek]

That tool is very versatile and exists in ACR also, shortcut K.

 

Click the auto masking option to keep things simple.

 

if you get it close and have photoshop, the use a HSL adjustment layer with a layer mask.

There is also an auto localized color adjustment, top left on the box. I have used it to adjust hair color,click and drag.

[roguewave]

Pindy, thanks for this!! I shoot in a tiny jazz club with multiple lights, each a different color. This will make my life a whole lot easier. Again thanks. Any other tips about how best to use the brush would be very much appreciated. Ben

[Jeff S]

I suspect Kelby's forthcoming LR4 book will provide other useful tips (just ignore his bad jokes). I discovered many otherwise hidden gems in his prior books. All it takes is a few of these to incorporate into your workflow to make life so much easier. So, even though I'm quite familiar with LR3, I'll waste no time scanning his new one for some ideas.

 

Jeff

[hoppyman]

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And Martin Evening's no doubt! That one will be sans humor though and biblical in proportion. It's an unfortunate side effect of software upgrades that it leads to book upgrades too.