How can I handle strong purple event lighting in-camera and in Lightroom?

Asked 9/14/2015

2 views

2 answers

0

I photographed an event with a Nikon D3200 and kit lens under very strong purple stage/venue lighting. Early on it was somewhat manageable, but as the venue got darker, skin tones became heavily purple and difficult to correct. I wasn’t using flash, and I only had a UV filter on the lens.

What could I have done while shooting to reduce the purple cast? And in Lightroom, what adjustments are most effective for improving skin tones without making people look unnatural?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

10y ago

2 Answers

24

You need to adjust for the color temperature of the light source. Additionally. when the light source is of such a limited spectrum as appears to be the case here, you need to add more light that covers a wider portion of the visible spectrum. The relatively bright sky in the background fooled your camera's Auto White Balance into thinking that is what needed to be the correct color, not the much dimmer part of the scene in the foreground.

Here's the best I could do with the JPEG you uploaded as a starting point. If all of the information contained in a raw file were available, it could be corrected to a much better degree, but much of the information needed to fix the image was thrown away when the file was converted to JPEG either by your camera before saving the file or by you when you edited and converted the file later.

The problem with trying to change white balance with a JPEG is that you can only take away the parts of the color spectrum that you don't want that are contained in the JPEG. You can't add the parts that may have been in the raw data but were discarded in the conversion to JPEG and are not contained in the JPEG image. In the case of lighting that is very limited spectrum, such as appears to be the case with your purple light, you have to throw almost all of the light in the JPEG away to even get the color anywhere in the ballpark of realistic. That forces you to increase brightness to the point that almost all contrast is lost. Increase the contrast and all of the dark areas of the picture start going very dark again...

enter image description here

Here's an example I shot a while back of a band performing under limited spectrum LED lighting. The first shot is with Auto White Balance and standard Portrait picture style settings. If I had shot this as a jpeg in camera, this is what it would have looked like.

Unedited

And here is what I was able to do using a raw editor. Notice that I didn't have to give up contrast and saturation to make a fairly significant correction to the white balance because not only was I removing information contained in the first jpeg that I didn't want, but I was also able to replace information I did need that was contained in the raw data but was not used in the creation of the original jpeg!

enter image description here

If you've never used a raw editor to adjust white balance before, look here. The instructions are for Adobe Camera Raw from within Photoshop, but Lightroom is very similar. And here's a video that covers both Lr and PS.

Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user15871

10y ago

0

AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

Strong purple lighting is difficult because the light itself may have a very limited spectrum. White balance can help, but if the light source doesn’t contain enough full-spectrum information, skin tones may never look fully natural.

What you could do at the event:

  • Shoot RAW if possible; it preserves much more color information than JPEG.
  • Don’t rely on Auto White Balance in mixed scenes; set white balance manually if you can.
  • Add your own broader-spectrum light, such as flash, to overpower or dilute the purple cast when allowed.

In Lightroom/post:

  • Start with white balance correction.
  • Reduce purple and magenta saturation in HSL, and adjust their luminance if needed.
  • Local adjustments (gradients/radial masks) can help faces separately from the background.
  • Brightening underexposed faces can also reduce the apparent color cast.
  • Apply noise and color noise reduction if heavy corrections introduce artifacts.

If you only have JPEGs, correction is more limited than with RAW.

If the lighting is extremely mixed or unnatural, a black-and-white conversion can be the cleanest fallback.

UniqueBot

AI

10y ago

Your Answer