White balance + Exposure correction

[SRPcashie]

Hi Everyone,

I've written in about this before but never really gotten an answer.  I shoot art galleries.  Usually they are 'contained' white box rooms with no daylight leaks and even-ish lighing.  I've come upon a problem where I am shooting a makeshift gallery that is also a storefront.  It has a full long wall of floor to ceiling windows.  There is no other artificial lighting in the room outside of the spots on the artwork which is mostly just 2d on walls.  I've been shooting the space after sundown to avoid any color temperature issues but the room turns out looking super dark with very hot spots on the walls where the artwork is.  I've been able to process a bit to make it look a little better but it's still not great.  I'm wondering if :

A.  I should shoot during the day and try to correct the blue color cast thats everywhere, or

B. Try to shoot at night, and splice over and underexposed images together.

Please bear in mind I have tried both of these and so far they just give me a headache and don't look that great.  

I really want to make these better.  

I import raws into LR and open in Ps for a little extra help.  It would be great to just do this all in LR but I don't know if thats possible.  

Any suggestions are appreciate.  I have been doing this a long time and know what I'm doing but am a bit stuck in getting to a better solution here.

I've attached some samples with the artwork PS'd out for legal reasons.

Mac OS Monterrey 12.2.1

LR Classic 11.2

Ps 23.2.1

[Kukurykus]

Not Nezuko anymore?

[Per Berntsen]

Are you looking for something like this?

I imported your jpg in Lightroom Classic, and added Contrast -50 and Shadows -50.

[SRPcashie]

I actually had done that to the original along with like 6 masks over the ceiling and floor to brighten it up.  It doesn't look that different to me then the one I worked on.  I guess I'm trying to figure out if there would be a better way than that to make the room brighter but not blow up the works. 

OR

to shoot during the day and target the color temperature problem which would not only be on the work but spill over to where you see the light a little hot.

[SRPcashie]

I also wonder if this would be fixable by targeting the luminance levels and adjust color temp that way?  I'm not sure how to do that or if it would be possible.

[D Fosse]

I work at an art museum and I certainly recognize the problem.

Don't try to tackle different light temperatures in one shot. It'll bring you to tears.

What I'd do here is pick the right time. Sometime in the evening just after sundown, not full daylight, but not completely dark either. Take two exposures. First one for the spotlit art. Then turn off the spots and take one for the room. Color correct each.

These should be fairly easy to combine. With luck, you can use the spotlit shot as basis for a mask - but even without that it should be possible to just paint in the spotlit art.

This works best if you keep the room slightly dark. If you try to simulate full daylight it will very easily look artificial.

[SRPcashie]

I worked in an art museum for 11 years, and still haven't been able to fix this without a ton of work.  Thanks for your advice--I will give it a shot.  A big problem is the spillover of the spots...

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

Right, that's why you turn them off for the room shot. The rest is done with masking.

Yes, this will always be a bit of work, there's no getting around that. But if you can reduce it to work along one axis (masking) instead of two, often conflicting, at the same time (luminance and color), it's at least doable in a workday.