Cloudy White Balance

[Ljboeker]

Hi all! I'm struggling with the color and brightness of my images on this particular session. It was a cloudy day near sunset. Their skin tones are all completely different so that made editing hard for me. Here's my problem with sessions like this; they look great on my calibrated screen. I can tell, per Damien's clipping warning action, that I am just under the highlight warning so I am not blowing my highlights. When I go to print, they come back dark. If I brighten and reprint, the highlights look blown. What am I doing wrong? Do I need to just brighten the shadows? Whats the best way to do that while keeping rich tones?

I'm okay with warm images or accurate white  balances, but I don't want my people to be dark, or green or orange. These images kind of printed all three. :(

Here is SOOR:

Edited:

[Damien Symonds]

1 hour ago, Ljboeker said:

they look great on my calibrated screen.

Does your calibrated screen actually match your prints?  Which Spyder do you have, and what screen?

[Ljboeker]

My screen matches my prints a good majority of the time. If there is not a lot of green to begin with, I come out pretty well or at least I don't notice a huge discrepancy. In the image above though, mom is more green in the prints and dad is dull. When I switched from WHCC a few years ago, I had a bit of a shock because they print very red and suddenly my prints were coming back green. I realized that either my local lab prints more green or I'd been editing green and WHCC's red was compensating.  However, I use all your tricks for correcting white balance and in these shady conditions, the green rears it's ugly head. I have a Spyde2Express and am working on a (don't kill me) HP Envy 17.3" Laptop.

[Damien Symonds]

Sorry, I'm confused.  Which pro lab do you use now?

[Ljboeker]

Quote

 

I'm in St. Louis, Mo., and it's called Diversified Lab.

[Damien Symonds]

And it's considered a quality lab?

[Ljboeker]

Yes, locally, they are well known and used by most of us.