How to remove blue cast from shadows?

This is really a lesson in not using important rolls to learn how to develop your film... I think I will try adjusting the color and tone curves first. I thought the shadows were the only problem, but seems like there are so many it wouldn't be worth all the time attempting to fix every one of them. Lesson learned.

If there are more suggestions on how to improve the color balancing, I will attempt them and post updates here.

I think it is also time to invest in a more popular editing platform, unfortunately.

The biggest issue is simply lack of contrast. The original is way too light and too flat. Fix the contrast and a global color adjustment gets you very close. I did warm up the shadows a little using the curves technique that Koraks demonstrated. If you want the file with the adjustment layers I used, so you can see the actual adjustments, let me know and I can email it to you.

chriscrawfordphoto said:

View attachment 356403

The biggest issue is simply lack of contrast. The original is way too light and too flat. Fix the contrast and a global color adjustment gets you very close. I did warm up the shadows a little using the curves technique that Koraks demonstrated. If you want the file with the adjustment layers I used, so you can see the actual adjustments, let me know and I can email it to you.

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I will look into contrast. Unfortunately I haven't hit the messages minimum to send a private message here, so I will contact you on your website.

cloudwrangler said:

I will look into contrast. Unfortunately I haven't hit the messages minimum to send a private message here, so I will contact you on your website.

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@cloudwrangler ,
Saw your post. Based on the usual factors we consider, I have manually removed your the restriction - feel free to use the Private Conversation function going forward.

And as a general message to other low post count members who have been around a bit and participated, please feel free to make a Report of one of your posts and in that Report request a change to your access restrictions.

MattKing said:

@cloudwrangler ,
Saw your post. Based on the usual factors we consider, I have manually removed your the restriction - feel free to use the Private Conversation function going forward.

And as a general message to other low post count members who have been around a bit and participated, please feel free to make a Report of one of your posts and in that Report request a change to your access restrictions.

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Cool, thank you Matt.

cloudwrangler said:

I will look into contrast. Unfortunately I haven't hit the messages minimum to send a private message here, so I will contact you on your website.

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Got your message, and just emailed the file to you

cloudwrangler said:

Here's the original unedited shot.

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Oh, that's fairly decent. I'd turn it into something like this and then call it a day:

Slight boost of red to reduce the overall cyan cast. I've included the small yellow bump (take out some blue) in the shadows since that's what you asked originally, but I doubt I would have done it myself.
I'm not sure what 'golden color' would be typical in this scene. It's pretty bright sunlight with the sun high up in the sky, which tends to give more washed out hues that often lean towards cyan.

I think maybe the main factor you're battling here is your creative vision vs. the lighting conditions that you encountered when photographing this scene. I suspect that if you had given it a few more hours, the light would have changed in quality to match your vision a little better.

Is this a DSLR scan by any chance? There's some pretty uneven illumination going on, it seems, and it doesn't really look like a development/processing issue. This is responsible for the problematic brown path in front of the chairs; if you balance that a little more favorably, the concrete along the right side of the frame will start tending towards blue and cyan, which will become a problem.

The color balance is still a little funky, but it's a lot easier to get something usable from this original than from the pre-edited image we started out with. It would probably be even better if we could start with the actual negative as such; i.e. the scan/photo of the negative as it looks to the naked eye.