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How to get "cold cloudy day" colors ?


Eddie331

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Hi guys, does anyone know how could I process the original image to get the "movie" effect of cold / dark cloudy day in winter?

To illustrate better, here is the original image of the location, and the desired look of the same place (from a camera shot taken during winter)

 

What tools to use and how, to get the colors of original image to look as close as possible as the second image? (without graffiti :)

Maybe adjustments / curves? (I tried to play with RGB in it, but still cant achieve similar colors )

Plus maybe in addition to that also make it darker and "softer" - how?

 

Thanks in advance for help and suggestions.

- original colors.jpg

- desired changed colors.jpg

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Hi @Eddie331 and Welcome to the forum :D.

 

One way is to make a new layer above your photo, then use a gradient - dark to lighter - and then change the mode of the layer to Multiply.

 

night.png

 

 

30b8T8B.gif

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Because it is sunny there is too much contrast. I think you should start by reducing contrast.

You may want to reduce the warm colors as well, There is an effect called "Color Dimmer" that can help you do that. Play with the layer's opacity adjustments until you are satisfied.

cloudy-and-dark-day-5374d0b.png

 

It looks like your first photo was already processed. Somehow it does not look natural to me. To make it softer you can use one of the Blur filters. I did not do it for my example.

 

 

Edited by Eli
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@Eddie331

 

Here's my attempt using Levels (one of the most powerful tools in PDN's arsenal that don't get enough love, IMHO) and Curves.

 

cold.png

 

To duplicate, look at the following screenshots of Levels (you can and should control the individual RGB channels, that is Red, Green, and Blue, to obtain the desire outcome):

adjust_blue.png

adjust_green.png

adjust_red.png

 

And finally, use Curves to darken the shadow a bit:

adjust_curve.png

 

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There's a common process to matching identical images in lighting.

 

Find the target lighting and the current lighting.

Set the primary color to a pixel in the first image.

Set the other color to a corresponding pixel in the second image.

Blur the images by the same amount if it's hard to select pixels in the same area.

Let's say the first image is what you have and the second is your goal.

 

Measure the lighting difference and make corrections.

Measure the difference between HSV and RGB of those pixels.
Use Hue/Saturation across the image to adjust saturation and lightness. Don't shift hue.

Use Channel Ops across the image to adjust color channels.

 

Make other corrections.

Auto level the images to see other visual differences. Undo afterwards.

Change contrast as needed.

Make hand adjustments. Clone Stamp and TR's Dodge and Burn come to mind.

 

Example

example.png.f8dce5eaeb4a6ebf7c5d9db1b83b5d81.png

I made the lighting corrections, then manually corrected the lighting of the post, but forgot the wall. Just magic wand the post with global and low tolerance so it selects everything that's lime-ish in color, apply lighting corrections, and clone stamp the edges.

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