Fred and Kirk, Thanks for the edit and comments. Am I correct that the best strategy when you have mixed lighting, is to get the color temp globally optimized in raw and then selectively correct color in PS? Or process the file more than once for different temps and then combine?
I'll play around with the file and try to find what I feel is the best balance. I do think, like Kirk suggests, that maintaing some warmth while reducing color casts is worth trying.
Will
Hi will.
First and for most, thank you for your words. I must confess that I was not very sure about my editing folie without having asked permission and I'm happy to see that you understood the spirit.
About your question, there are several approaches. The good thing about PS is that it's like Rome. All the ways leads to the same goal.
In your image there where basically 2 kinds of dominance issues, magenta and green.
My personal view, thinking in a non automatized task, and let's say that the RAW overall tone that you want is done, I would look at things that way.
- Clean the original for all dust but also elements that can be distracting. (for ex the yellow seal, unless you want to keep it to indicate daily life)
then
- seeing the materials groups, for example the metal structures of the windows= 1 layer
- the wood, floor+top+chairs, another layer
- the walls, all the white, another layer
- exteriors, another layer.
Each layer might require different correction. You can choose to have for ex the metal warm, but it might have reflections that are different from the walls.
The good thing about working with layer is that you have a perfect flexibility. If you use the pen tool, don't forget to save the path (it's working path on default) once you closed it because you might need it.
I'm not very friendly of abusing the selective corrections after the raw stage, you will always have more precise results with the brush, but it's longuer. (as often, the longuer, the better). But this is not a rule and you will have to combine several techniques. I recommend if you want to go serious on that, that you train a lot with the pics you have. Trying different ways and you will get soon the tricks. The very good point is that this is your house so you can see what the materials really are.
The retouching I did was rather cold on purpose, it was kind of too neutral. But this has an advantage, it creates a clean Master for more advanced step and allows very easily to change tones or pushing a more advanced retouching if you need from a wealphy base.
If you check the Jim's interior pic, it's rather warm. But there is no dominance conflict, that's IMO the point to reach. Even the blueish reflection on the column warnish is ok because of the aperture in the center top. It belongs to the exterior that "enters" inside and it's geometrically distributed.
Check Jim's Blog, the works are particularly impressive and there are many arquitecture.
It seems a bit of work but it's not that much and in the end it saves a lot of time later because your client might want a slightly different tone, colder or warmer etc...
The ideal would be gaining experience in the shooting with the lightning so the pp stage is reduced. This is where the experienced arquitecture photographers make the big difference. This is the toughest and on that I'm not usefull at all.