Color Correcting The Backrooms Using Real Wallpaper and Carpet Samples

The Gift of Calibration

 Recently, I helped Bob Mazza with the process of making a GoFundMe to pay for repairs to the building where the original Backrooms image was taken so it doesn't collapse. I did a lot of other things to help as well, like making a poster for him to sell and acting as a middleman between him and the Virtual World Discord server, as he only really uses  Email and Facebook Messenger.

One of the ideas Bob had was to take some scraps of original wallpaper and carpet he had from before the upstairs remodel and to put them on plaques to sell. The funds go towards the building repairs. Before he put them up for sale, Bob offered to send me one as a gift for all my help. He even put it in a plastic bag from the store. 🙂

Thank you Bob, for everything!

One thing that made me pause before opening the package was that it was shipped with 807 Oregon Street, the location of the original Backrooms photo, as the return address. I thought first about how much "I got a package from The Backrooms" sounds like a creepypasta on it's own. Then I mused on how if the package would have been returned for some reason, the post office would have literally sent it to The Backrooms. Gladly, it seems I avoided that fate, and the package showed up on my front door safe and sound.

DON'T Open A Package From The Backrooms At 3AM!!! (TOO SCARY)

Let's take this out of my LED-lit house and into mother nature's own calibrated black-body emitter, the Sun. I did this at high noon in direct sunlight with no clouds, so as to be close to a neutral 5250K color temperature.

Exposed to sunlight, possibly for the first time in decades.

This is going to serve as the reference image for the color correction. Here are some close-ups if you want the details of the samples.

 

Close-ups using the macro camera which appears more vibrant.

The Correction Process

The first step was to use the image with the samples in direct sunlight as a "source of truth" for the colors. The carpet is the most consistent thing, as some walls in the room are more yellow than others. I manually corrected the lens distortion to get straight lines, and then matched the exposure and color to the samples.

DSC00160.JPG w/ Samples
Manual Lens Correction
Manual Color + Exposure Correction

Note that the area in the back (south) looks more yellow. This is because the wallpaper in this area was more yellow than the area on the camera's side of the arches (north). Even the carpet looks more yellow back there, because of the indirect light from the walls.

In a phone call I had with Bob, he explained that the lights in these images were much dimmer than normal fluorescent bulbs. This is because when the furniture store was filled with furnishings, there would be numerous lamps and light fixtures which would add more "homey" and less "office" lighting. The fluorescent lights were really only to provide ambient lighting and to fill in gaps where lamps would not fit.

Additionally, Bob said the covers were actually crystal glass, which removes the possibility that the covers were plastic that yellowed with age.

Now that I had the first image color corrected, I could use the "Match Color" feature in Photoshop to automatically get the remaining images close to matching the exposure and color, before doing some manual tweaks. I also just re-used the lens correction settings for all the remaining images.

DSC00159.JPG w/ Samples
Same Lens Correction
Matched Color + Exposure Correction w/ Tweaks

DSC00161.JPG w/ Samples
Same Lens Correction
Matched Color + Exposure Correction w/ Tweaks

As previously noted, the carpet in DSC00161 is more yellow because of indirect lighting from the walls. In areas near the middle of the room, where direct lighting is dominant, you can see how it has a more purple hue.

You may also note the contrast is lower in these images. This is because the flash fired in DSC160, but not the other two.

The Final Color & Lens Corrected Photos

DSC00159.JPG
Taken 2002-06-12 @ 8:20:17 AM
No Flash

DSC00160.JPG
Taken 2002-06-12 @ 8:20:20 AM
Single Flash (No Red-Eye Reduction)

DSC00161.JPG
Taken 2002-06-12 @ 8:21:13 AM
No Flash

 

Compare To The Mezzanine Pictures

 Another thing that Bob made clear in the phone calls is that the upstairs east room has the same carpet as the mezzanine. In the original images, the carpet looked very different though. Now that we have the color corrected ones, let's see how well they compare to the unedited mezzanine pictures.

DSC00157.JPG (Unedited)
Taken 2002-06-12 @ 8:19:25 AM
Single Flash (No Red-Eye Reduction)

DSC00158.JPG (Unedited)
Taken 2002-06-12 @ 8:19:34 AM
Single Flash (No Red-Eye Reduction)

While they are a bit darker, in my opinion it's very easy to see that my color corrected versions have the same carpet and similar wallpaper to the upstairs east room. I'm going to call that a success.

Donate to #SaveTheBackrooms Here!

All funds will be used by Bob towards the building repairs.

For more frequent updates on my projects, or if you have comments or suggestions, join my Discord server!