Week 3: Exercise 6 - St Vitus Cathedral, Prague. Removing a Shadow Cast (2)

[leeharper_admin]

I couldn't get this exactly where I wanted it with Curves alone (I had to break out some channel blending  ;)).

I set the shadow point in Lab (because the shadow was not neutral), before moving into RGB to take care of the colour. I've attached the curve, and would be interested to know if you think that the shape is ok.

Having taken care of the cast, I thought that the image looked rather muddy (I've attached this version), so I created a new layer to use for channel blending. I completely replaced the Blue channel with the red; added some of the red channel to the green; and then curved both the red and the green (in Photoshop), to get some shape into the stone. This layer was then set to Luminosity mode.

I took the result of all of these manipulations back into CM, and boosted the saturation (with the slider) to 1.60 (painting out the areas where the pedestrians skin was wrecked with the History brush (I couldn't find a decent mask to use).

How does my attempt compare with what others have done with this image in the past?

Lee.

[ggroess]

Lee,
Try setting the shadow a bit deeper...there is a loss of fullness here that makes the color cast look to be more than the 3-5 I am finding on the hue clocks. 

Remember that when color cast is associated with image brightness you need RGB for some of the work.

Greg