Hi,
sometimes, I have a digital photograph in raw format, shot in
"available dark" mode, which when white balanced for good colour
(especially under heavy tungsten or fluorescent light) shows severe
noise in the other channels. That's understandable, if I wanted
best colour, I would use CC filter over the lens in the first place
(but remember, I am in "abysmally dark" mode and CC filters eat
lotsa light). The whitebalancing needs to be done, as otherwise the
fluorescent colours are ugly. But at the same time, exposure of
e.g. face is quite lower (because the software substracted the ugly
green cast, now there is less exposure on it). When I put it back
up, of course, noise grows a lot.
What I am thinking about, is there a way to white balance a picture
to good colour, and than add to the luminance the light from the
other channels?
For example, I have a singer shot under heavy red spotlight. I want
to put the red a bit, because it's simply too much (but not reduce
it completely, it's after all an artistic lighting). But that makes
him darker (because the major element of the luminance was the red
channel). Could I for example add the red channel (possibly masked)
from an unbalanced RAW conversion to the whitebalanced raw
conversion with some mode to add to the luminance only? This would
help with the noise issues as well, and the image would still be
balanced.
An equivalent of what PS CS supposedly do with lost highlights, you
can put them back (but gray only), because it uses luminance from
the other not-so-much lost channels. I would like something similar
to do to the shadows.
Good light!
fra
