# Correcting blue tinted snow in bright sunlight



## ISP Images (Mar 15, 2015)

Hello everyone, my name is Gary and I am new to this forum. I am a prolific user of LR, having the latest 5.7 version, however, sometimes I get stuck and need a push to get unstuck, which is the case now. My question is this; I took a photo of a snow scene outlining a farm in the background with a fence adjoining the property with the it casting it's shadow onto a snowy bank on my side of this fence with the sky above all of this a beautiful color of blue. There is a stand of trees to the far right of this image, close to the fence too. When in LR I attempt to adjust the snow to white, I am unable to do so. I keep getting a slight tinge of blue on the snow, due to what I believe is also the color of the sky, so that when I adjust for that, it naturally adjusts the other same color in the image. I am not sure I am articulating this well enough for you to understand my problem, but hopefully you do. I want to remove the blue tint from the snow, creating an overall white effect instead. If anyone can assist me with this issue I would be most grateful. Thank you


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## Grizz (Mar 15, 2015)

I don't know if this is what your after but I used the graduated filter on the bottom half of the image to adjust the WB and decrease the saturation.


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## ISP Images (Mar 15, 2015)

Yes, this is the general idea of what I am looking for. You accomplished this with the masking tool?


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## ISP Images (Mar 15, 2015)

Oh wait a minute; I just went back and read what you wrote; the graduated filter is what you used.. Ok.. Yea, that sounds solid.. I will do that. Thank you so much for responding; I greatly appreciate it.


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## Grizz (Mar 15, 2015)

My pleasure.  Welcome to the Forums. Great people here that are always willing to help.

I did not pay attention to the snow on the roof of the two buildings. I would just use the masking brush on those to desaturate the blue tint.


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## Tony Jay (Mar 15, 2015)

Hi ISP, welcome to Lightroom Forums!

My suggestion is a bit different to Grizz.

IMHO, a regional edit is not the way to go.
First up, any white and reflective surface that is in shadow and yet exposed to a blue sky as in this image will reflect blue light. To try to eliminate the blue in the snow shadows completely gives an unnatural result. However my take on this image is that it is slightly underexposed and is also slightly lacking in contrast and also the global white balance is a bit blue. From the position of the sun it is clear that overall lighting of the scene was probably warmer (more yellow) than cold (more blue).

All I did was to change the white balance to warm the whole scene slightly.
I also use the white and black sliders to alter the white and black points slightly to increase scene contrast.
Then I slightly altered the shadows and highlights, again rather subtly, just to increase regional contrast in the shadows and highlights. 
I also made a slight adjustment to the the overall tone curve.
Allowing for the limits of playing with a JPEG I think the result looks good.






Tony Jay


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## ISP Images (Mar 16, 2015)

Hi Tony, first of all, please allow me to offer my thanks and appreciation for responding to my post. I like your what you did and your suggestions. I am will be applying them to this image that hopefully will allow me to wrap this up. I have spent way too much time on this, but, it was necessary due to the fact it was not acceptable the way it was. I am entering it into a contest, the deadline of which is April 11th, so need to get this finished soon. Again, awesome work, and thank you for being so kind.


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