How to restore color of wood photographed under fluorescent lighting?

Question

I have taken photos of a church organ console with a digital camera, but the lighting conditions were very low. That's why I used an umbrella + daylight fluorescent bulb (from a kit similar to this Neewer 600W 5500K kit).

But I find the wood parts quite dull (too "white" because of bulb?):

The colours are very sad, whereas I expected something like this (it was nearly like this in reality):

Questions:

1. What would you do to recover these beautiful lively colors? (here is a link to the dull image, just in case you want to try)

2. In general I always find the colors of photos shot with a daylight fluorescent spiral lightbulb quite cold / depressing. Did you have the same experience?

PS: I do own a XRite colorchecker, I should have used it, and I should have shot in RAW, but too late now...

Answer 1

It is possible to correct colors if you have the proper software. Here's the result I obtained with Paint Shop Pro version 9, which is over 10 years old by now. Unfortunately the Manual Color Correction function that I used was deprecated around that time, so I don't know if it's still available in modern versions. I simply left-clicked on a representative area of the image, and right-clicked on a similar area in your reference image; it only took a few seconds.

I often use this function to do white balance corrections and it's able to do magic. Starting with RAW would be better, but this is often adequate.

Edit: I was asked to show the settings, so here it is in action. There's not much to it, many of the controls are disabled in manual mode and everything in the upper half is for controlling presets and the preview.

Answer 2

• Try to use a color checker... oh, too late now.

• Or try to shoot in raw... oh, to late now too.

• Try to setup a specific white balance... oh, to late now.

(Sorry for puting lemon in the wound n_n )

The only thing you can do now is to make artificial coloring inside Photoshop or Gimp.

Moving curves or making a new layer and trying diferent blending modes, for example color.

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You need to adjust the white balance of this lights (Daylight fluorescent spiral lightbulb) or any light to remove the cold look (most likely greenish) but in some cases you could have some colors not as bright as they are originally. That is something a color profile should fix in a good extent.

Take a look at this post: Color issue: studio images have a pink hue

Answer 3

Next time, shoot in raw.

If you have Adobe camera raw, you can try to open the image in camera raw, then select "Automatic" as the lightning. Most of the time it gets the image correctly.

Answer 4

If in raw try and find a neutral colour to click on for your white balance. Having a grey card in your bag is helpful also, just take your initial photo with the greycard in shot and shoot in raw