Experiment with Blue Flowers

Here I am checking to see how close I can get to what I was actually seeing with auto corrections in PSP7. I took several shots to experiment with different settings of these flowers (phlox?) that were blooming on the bank just outside the door of our room last weekend.

The first photo shows very accurate colors. They were an incredible blue...I noticed because I want some blue flowers for my garden at home.

The second shot was much too dark. That is the one I played with in PSP7.

(all images reduced to 400x300 and 30% compression)

colors true

Colors were not changed here. This is very accurate to what I was seeing. The only changes to this shot are:
Resize
Clarify at 3
Unsharp mask at
3.04/28/17


original too dark

Here is the shot I will play with. Not exactly the same as the first, but just slightly to the right in the same flower grouping.

Unsharp mask only at same settings as above.

adjustment 1

I played with a BUNCH of auto settings here. The best I could get was this washed out version.

Settings:
Auto Color:
Str: 42/Temp: 9300
Contrast:
Neutral, Normal, Bold
Saturation:
More Colorful, Strong

Clarify & Unsharp same as #1


Here I reapplied saturation adjustment at the same settings to the above shot. A breath closer, but still not right. Blue is paler and more washed out and leaning more toward a reddish lavendar than the true bright blue green. (Red shows more here and in previous after shrinking and compressing.)
manual color correction
 I got just a bit closer with manual color correction. In this version I used the same settings for color and contrast adjustments. Same unsharp/clarify settings. Saturation was changed to more colorful, weak, then I eyedroppered a blue out of one of the flowers that looked close (#899CFF) and applied it to the flowers. I think this could bring it even closer with some selections & color fiddling.

Conclusion:

It's easier to take a little extra time and try to get the shot right in the first place...snap, snap, snap again...and again for good measure.

If you are going to rely on auto corrections alone, you'd better get your nose back in that camera manual and Ron's lessons and get it right the first time! I might not have noticed this difference if I had not been so enamored with the color in the first place, plus had a shot that turned out with true colors....I'd better keep snapping lots of shots at different settings until I get a better understanding of this little silver box. *grin*
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