Remove Pink Tint from Pictures

[fitzj]

What is the best way to remove the pink tint from this picture? I tired  Under White Balance, Tint.

IMG_3394.CR2

[carl123]

You could start with the White Balance Tool in the Tools Panel on the left of the screen (Develop Persona)

Select the tool and click on the table cloth

[h_d]

With a Selective Colour adjustment you can dial down the Magentas quite effectively, although you may need to do a bit more to eliminate those pesky yellows:

 

 

ADD: alternatively you could use an HSL adjustment, choose the Magenta target blob, close up the four sliders on Magenta, reduce the Saturation Shift and boost the Luminosity Shift:

 

 

(I developed the original .CR2 file without making any changes in Develop Persona - these suggestions are both in Photo Persona.)

[fitzj]

It's better, but there's still a lot of magenta. This is a huge problem in hotels where weddings are held. Crazy lighting systems. How do wedding photographers deal with this? Would white balancing the camera beforehand stop this happening or are their special camera filters for this issue?

[Ldina]

@fitzj Wow...that's pretty horrendous lighting. I guess the wedding venue wanted different colored lighting in different areas "for effect". Yes, mixed lighting is a nightmare for photographers, especially if skin tones are involved. I don't think I've ever seen one quite THAT extreme and I've been doing this a LONG time. 

Since you have a RAW image, do a WB in the Develop Persona. I'd do it on the white tablecloth nearest to you since it is prominent. If you hold the OPT Key on Mac while the WB tool is selected, you can drag a rectangle around a bigger area and Affinity will average that portion so it is white. 

In the Photo Persona, either Selective Color or HSL will work on the magentas and greens. I'd probably use HSL, target the greens and refine that using the Sampler tool to zero in on the color range you want to effect. Then reduce the saturation (and/or alternatively, play with the Hue slider to adjust the hue somewhat). Repeat for the Magentas.

Without the greens and magentas, this is mostly a B&W image, so you might even consider making it a B&W or a toned image. Channel Mixer set to Gray will give you a balanced grayscale. Recolor Adjustment will allow you to tone the print and eliminate all color casts. 

Many wedding photographers will use flash and use gels on their strobe, matched to the predominant lighting to help balance color casts. You're basically screwed if the wedding venue is putting heavy magenta in one area and sickly green in another. Hello B&W!! 🤣

[Ldina]

@fitzj Here's a toned version from your original, using the steps I outlined. I corrected WB in the Develop Persona, then added layers as shown below. You may prefer B&W, or a full color image, with whatever color is remaining after eliminating the magenta and green casts. If I hide that top "Recolor Adjustment" layer (make it invisible), then the full color image shows through, but without the magenta and green color casts. FWIW. Have fun! 🥴😆

[fitzj]

On 5/8/2025 at 10:09 PM, Ldina said:

@fitzj Here's a toned version from your original, using the steps I outlined. I corrected WB in the Develop Persona, then added layers as shown below. You may prefer B&W, or a full color image, with whatever color is remaining after eliminating the magenta and green casts. If I hide that top "Recolor Adjustment" layer (make it invisible), then the full color image shows through, but without the magenta and green color casts. FWIW. Have fun! 🥴😆

Thanks, but its now a Black and White picture. I guess not much  can be done  with that crazy lighten. It's common now in Hotels where weddings are held.

[Ldina]

You have a difficult challenge. Assuming you want to remove BOTH the magenta AND greenish-yellow cast, there's not all that much color remaining in the image you posted. How you go about "rebalancing" the color in these situations will yield a variety of different possible results. You could remove, or tone down, the magenta and keep the greenish lighting for effect, or vice versa. But greenish yellow skin tones aren't that pleasing (brides usually don't want to look like ghouls!! Haha). White Balancing a single light source is easy...for example, a room with ONLY fluorescent tubes that kick out an ugly greenish cast. No problem. Mixed lighting situations are much more difficult. It takes a fair amount of extra work to make photos in mixed lighting look good. If the left half of the room is mostly green, and the right half is mostly magenta, some careful masking and layer blending isn't too hard, but if it's random, it's difficult. Mixing daylight and old-fashioned incandescent light isn't quite as bad, since our eyes are well adapted to blue/yellow differences, from warm yellow-orange candle light to heavy, bluish shade It's not ideal, but often acceptable. When it's green and magenta, it's a whole different ballgame. 

I think wedding venues that purposely mix magenta and greenish light, and perhaps other colors, in one room are crazy. Photos taken in that venue are likely to look pretty bad, and that won't please the bride and groom or their families, if they're looking for pleasing skin tones. I'd think it would chase business away, Then again, most of the time, they'll blame the photographer, and not the wedding venue. You can live with the "festive" colors, but don't expect great skin tones. Probably your best bet is to use powerful strobe lighting on your main subjects to overwhelm all those colored lights in the room. This way, at least your subjects will be mostly lit by a single light source that is reasonably close to daylight color temperature. The background will have loads of magenta and greenish colors. That may be acceptable, and besides those distant objects and people will be darker, since your strobe light intensity falls off with the square of the distance.

I feel your pain. I've done a few dozen weddings over the years, but never with lighting this bad. I never liked doing weddings, so I stopped doing them ages ago. I guess you'll just need to take your important wedding photos under more controlled conditions, so they don't look like zombies, or participants at one of those Indian Color Festivals, where everyone comes home covered in bright colored dyes and powders!

 Like I said….have fun!!! 🫤

[NotMyFault]

12 hours ago, fitzj said:

Thanks, but its now a Black and White picture. I guess not much  can be done  with that crazy lighten. It's common now in Hotels where weddings are held.

The image contains:

• white table cloth
• white chairs
• chrome / silver reflecting objects
• white or grey walls
• transparent and refrlecting glass

so the only colors you will see are those from magenta lighting in front and green lights in back.

after desaturating these areas, there are very low saturated yellow, red, blue traces within the cloth.

So the image is almost BW after removing the unwanted color tints.

it can become more interesting if you have people with colored wardrobe and natural skin colors. 
if you can provide such an example, we can how to deal with. 
 

I see only 2 options:

1. Desaturate unwanted color cast from lights (low effort), apply to all images an get som consistency between images
2. Deal with every image individually, to recover „natural“ skin colors and colors of colorful objects. Much effort, and the images will lose their authenticity and become artificial. It will no longer match what participants observed live.

 

 

 

[NotMyFault]

After removing both artificial tints, I checked the skin colors of the person in background. It is Hue 30, so perfect.

the room is almost pur BW.

 

[R C-R]

19 hours ago, fitzj said:

I guess not much  can be done  with that crazy lighten. It's common now in Hotels where weddings are held.

From what I can tell, this shot was taken before the wedding party came into the room. If so, my guess is whoever was controlling the lights was running tests to create moods or "looks" to use during different parts of the event, perhaps to show the father of the bride or whoever was contracted to do lighting for the event what was possible & what was wanted.

IOW, probably not representative of the lighting that would be used constantly, if at all, during the event.

So the best thing the photographer could do is to either wait for more normal lighting or find the person running the lights & ask for something more natural to take a few shots of the place settings, layout of the room, & so on before the guests arrived.

Anyway, having worked as a contractor in hotels for some similar special events, that's my guess why the lighting was "crazy" at that time & the best way for a photographer to deal with it.

[fitzj]

No that the colour throughout the meal. It very common now. Many complain about it. Also venues have this pattern of ceiling lights changing which makes photography impossible.

[R C-R]

16 minutes ago, fitzj said:

No that the colour throughout the meal. It very common now. Many complain about it.

OK, then why would anyone expect the photographer to somehow make it look like the event was lit by normal lighting? Seems kind of "mission impossible" to me.

[fitzj]

It seems they must have some sort of filters to eliminate this problem, as any wedding venue I have attend in the last 5 years have this lightening.  I also see it in the entrance to Large Offices.

[R C-R]

12 minutes ago, fitzj said:

It seems they must have some sort of filters to eliminate this problem, as any wedding venue I have attend in the last 5 years have this lightening.  I also see it in the entrance to Large Offices.

If the lights are changing, I can't imagine there is any one filter that would make the room look like it was normally lit. Besides, if a filter was used that removed the strong magenta color cast, it doesn't seem like there would be much left to make more than a very dark, shadowy image.

The only thing I can think of that would be very effective is a very bright flash, or a bunch of them synced together, that illuminated everything with bright white light.

[Ldina]

A lens filter can correct "one" color cast, but not two or three. If you correct the magenta, it will probably pump up the other colors and make them more pronounced. For example, if you remove most of the magenta cast with a color correction filter over the lens, then you can manually correct some of the other color casts in AP with many different tools...but, be prepared for a lot of extra post-processing on every photo you take. Results will be a compromise. Who knows, maybe they want colorful, kaleidoscope images during the reception?

Like I said previously, your best bet is to take your important wedding photos under controlled lighting conditions. In your kaleidoscope color room, use a fairly powerful flash targeted on your main subjects to overpower all those colored lights for reasonably good skin tones and decent color, and let the background be whatever color you're stuck with (or desaturate them some if hideous). The background will tend to be fairly dark anyway due to light falloff. No filter is going to correct that messed up lighting, especially if it's constantly changing. We have no miracles to offer you, sorry.

[Ron P.]

Easy Peasy, just need about 4 of these. They'll overpower those sickly venue lights. If there are guests present you might want to provide sunglasses for them. 😁

 

[joe_l]

This image is really difficult to process. I tried, but now it has to much yellow.

[thomaso]

On 5/8/2025 at 9:49 PM, fitzj said:

Would white balancing the camera beforehand stop this happening

Just try different settings. Even with light sources with different colour ranges, a more neutral /less magenta result can be achieved, possibly with a custom Kelvin setting – or achieve a result that can be more easily adjusted during image development than this magenta colour cast.

https://www.canon-europe.com/support/consumer_products/content/faq/?itemid=tcm:13-821752

[RichardMH]

If this is something you're going to encounter a lot think about investing in 3D LUT Creator. Selective colour on steroids.

 

[user_0815]

This is really tough and extreme. First I'd reduce the magenta and then colour balance the rest out and tweak with selective colour. On the Colour balance I slapped on a hue range mask. 

[NotMyFault]

2 hours ago, joe_l said:

This image is really difficult to process. I tried, but now it has to much yellow.

Which colors do you want to see?
 

i see magenta tint and green tint, and the rest is almost desaturated. It is totally normal for wedding images to show some artistic tint. So what is your artistic intent?

[NotMyFault]

Just now, user_0815 said:

This is really tough and extreme. First I'd reduce the magenta and then colour balance the rest out and tweak with selective colour. On the Colour balance I slapped on a hue range mask. 

Now the cutlery looks rusty

[joe_l]

1 minute ago, NotMyFault said:

i see magenta tint and green tint, and the rest is almost desaturated. It is totally normal for wedding images to show some artistic tint. So what is your artistic intent?

No artistic intent, just experimented with the image of the OP to get rid of the pink colour.

[Ldina]

One last thought...

See if you can find an AI App online that is capable of "fixing" or at least reducing severe 'mixed lighting'. Such an AI algorithm may be able to identify and correct local color casts, which is really what you need here. I don't know if one exists, and if so, how well it may work. Might be worth a little time searching for one.