On Sun, 02 Aug 2009 11:58:08 +0100, David Kilpatrick wrote:

wrote:
i was always taught to use blue as a background when taking pix of
skin; is there a reason for this? i would think that neutral grey would
be more appropriate ..

tia

steve


That was in the days of colour negative printing. If you used a brown to
grey background, which actually looks best, the auto colour balance of
the printing might produce cold skin tones (grey not so big a problem,
but any warm colours could turn the skin blue or green in tint).

To avoid this a lot of professionals used blue backgrounds, not too
strong in colour, for stuff like school portraits where cheaper
automated printing would be used. This kept the skin colours warm.

This is what one would expect from cheap "drug store" photofinishing.
With a good photofinisher and experienced operators, there will be no
color casts due to background color. And the cost difference between the
two extremes was small. And you had your prints the next day, not next
week.

--
Fotoguy
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