Below are two color variations, all of these were done in Camera Raw (CS4), again, using just the white balance to change the colors. One used a very high daylight white balance, the other a somewhat low tungsten white balance. I did use a master RGB curve and a few other tools to tweek contrast, brightness, etc... But all color adjustments were global in nature.

Many people like to use more than just a global white balance adjustment to affect an images colors. One of the most popular adjustments is the RGB curves tool, which is kind of a hybrid color adjustment tool in the sense that while all colors can be affected by it, it also has some ability to isolate certain tones, how much depends on the type of curves you draw out. For example, you might want to give all the bright highlights of an image a distinct color cast while leaving the rest of the image unaffected. Even with the changes that can occur by using a tool like RGB curves, the original production design colors can still work. Below is an example of this same image after being processed using an RGB curve adjustment layer in Photoshop CS4. The curve settings are pictured next to it.

 

I used the tool to accentuate brighter blues in the image, but I also ended up affecting all the other colors that had the same tonality, like some of the skin tones for example. If I were very bent on using this type of post process for a scene, but didn't like the way skin tones were affected, I would need to adjust the actors makeup on set to compensate for something I knew was going to become problematic in post (ie, by warming their skin tone up more in anticipation of loosing a lot of warmth in post...). Remember, good color is a duality, a mix of production design and post processes. Being an experienced colorist, I'm well aware of other post tools and techniques I can use to solve this problem, but it makes you think...

What is the most cost effective solution to this problem?

The answer could swing many ways depending on the budget of the project, and how complex the entire post solution is VS the on set production design solution. This is why a good film production conducts tests where various aspects of production design are lit, filmed, and post processed. Generally speaking, color correction will cost less if you can avoid complicated selective color adjustments, especially anything involving a lot of moving masks.

By now my position should be fairly well understood about the importance of production design, and its subsequent relationship with color post processing. I would like to leave you with a small story about how important it is to understand this relationship, even when you have millions of dollars in your budget.

Lord of The Rings, a block buster trilogy shot by DP Andrew Lesnie, had a big color problem. Do you remember what color Aaragorn's cloak was? If you do, I bet you'll say black or gray. The reality is that it's actually olive drab green in not only the novels, but also in all of the action figure products, etc... So why is it black/gray looking in the film? Simple. There was a bit of pride on the part of the costume designer. She choose a fabric she really loved, which was the right color in real life, but the DP had warned her to use a different fabric... because he knew that after it went threw post processing, it would no longer look olive drab green.

If only she had listened to the DP.

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