Light is everything and some times it is just too much. This statue in the China Store at Epcot presented some real color balance challenges. There was enough light it just was of several different color temperatures.

The original capture was quite warm with the statue being almost orange. After sampling several different areas this was about the best I could do.  I think there was incandescent lights, probably some hot halogen spots and from behind me an open doorway bringing in daylight. As you can see there a a blue cast to most of the statue while the midsection is orange. And then there is the magenta cast on the shoulders. There wasn’t one color temperature that covered all the lights.  But is this a throw away image? Nope, time for black and white.

Because this raw file came from a Fujifilm X-T2 I had access to the all the Fujifilm ACROS² Film Simulation profiles from within Lightroom.  For the conversion I used the Acros+G filter simulation.

I have to admit I love color images but sometimes I just have to surrender to the black and white muse. The Fujifilm ACROS simulations are just stunning. The tonal ranges are so mellow. Images you can eat off of.

I applied the ACROS+G simulation right over the above image.  I then moved the image into Photoshop as a smart object where I applied Google’s Nik Color Effects Pro 4 to the image for Pro and Tonal Contrast¹. Just works.

Images shot with Fujifilm X-T2 and XF 16-55mm F/2.8 R LM WR

¹ I got the Pro and Tonal Contrast Recipe from a KelbyOne class on processing aviation images by Moose Peterson. While Moose uses the recipe for bringing out detail on aircraft, it seems to work on just about any image.
²I couldn’t decide if ACROS was supposed to be all caps or not. In lightroom it is so I updated the post to ACROS.