The dark art of perfect white balance

[cuthbert]

i've got myself a set of colour cards to help me with white balance in tricky lighting.

this is the default import, i set white balance as 'daylight' in camera, this is where it is now (according to lightroom is 5200k).

this is the white balance lightroom came up with using the grey card as a reference.

this is my attempt at doing it by eye only.

by eye 2

Adobe Standard 2012 process, using grey card as starting point.

so, why is lightroom so bad at this? am i doing anything wrong?

there was no flash or artificial lighting used, daylight (overcast, but bright) and the subject was in shade, although there would have been some green spill from the environment without a doubt.

what do you guys do to nail it?

 

[arad85]

so, why is lightroom so bad at this? am i doing anything wrong?

LR calculates the colour temperature (and tint) from 4 numbers RGGB levels (I have no idea how they are calculated in the first instance...). There isn't a standard way of doing this so you should never assume the colour temperature is absolute in LR....

what do you guys do to nail it?

So... what do you believe. If you have the grey card as balanced, you have a distinct shift to the blue (R<G<B on the grey card). But you're balancing it for how it looked on the day - not "correct" colours. TBH, the autobalanced one looks "right" to me. The other two make the girl look too pale (but I don't know what she actually looks like).

 

[artyman]

Setting white balance is perhaps over emphasised in my opinion, I paint and the white paper from different manufacturers varies considerably as do white cars, so picking one of these whites on which to base a standard may make the whole exercise a bit pointless.

Whilst you don't wan't it wildy out, being over anxious is fretting without cause to me. if it looks OK then be happy. Our eyes adjust to our colour perception in any case.

 

[chphotos]

To my eyes, the Lightroom corrected is 'correct' in that it looks warmer and more pleasant. The original, and your correction, make the little girl look 'colder' or as Andy has said, paler.

But this is subjective.

 

[Gazamonk]

To my eyes, the Lightroom corrected is 'correct' in that it looks warmer and more pleasant. The original, and your correction, make the little girl look 'colder' or as Andy has said, paler.

I agree, the lightroom correction looks the better of the three and the other two look distinctly cooler. Even if 1 and 3 were closer to the true colour I would still rather look at 2.

 

[simonblue]

Setting white balance is perhaps over emphasised in my opinion, I paint and the white paper from different manufacturers varies considerably as do white cars, so picking one of these whites on which to base a standard may make the whole exercise a bit pointless.

Whilst you don't wan't it wildy out, being over anxious is fretting without cause to me. if it looks OK then be happy. Our eyes adjust to our colour perception in any case.

Adgeed

 

[StewartR]

I agree, the lightroom correction looks the better of the three and the other two look distinctly cooler. Even if 1 and 3 were closer to the true colour I would still rather look at 2.

I agree totally. White balance is more art than science and #2 definitely looks the best to me.

 

[arad85]

If you have the grey card as balanced, you have a distinct shift to the blue (R<G<B on the grey card).

Just to clarify... What I meant here is that in the third shot, where the OP has balanced it according to his eye, the R/G/B values are biased towards the green and even more towards the blue which makes the grey card slightly greeny-blue in true colour.

The problem is that the actual colour you perceive is dependent on the lighting which, on an overcast day and in a shady forest setting, you will perceive the colours to be more like 3, but the actual colours (i.e. what it would look like under normalised lighting) will be more like 2.

 

[Livin The Dream]

I'm with you here Mark in that 3 would have been my neutral interpretation. I seem to be chasing ideals too but there's so many variables that come into play. Ive gone back to auto WB these days as ive found it seems a slightly better starting point across most situations. Are you finding the new body is in need of a different profile than what you were used to?

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

on my machine with my eyes the LR one looks warm but nicer the other two look too cold.

Most people like their pictures on the warm side... in the days of film most managed to give people that, even then, many people used warm up filters, especially on shots lit by the sky.

There is no one true colour of anything.. what we see depends on the light.

In this age of digital photography we have the option to set to our preferences.

I use the dropper tool in LR and try to find a neutral grey and work from there. It probably takes a few attempts to get it just right, as I like it.

 

[vaizki]

I think #2 is the best as well, coming off the gray card. I would probably take saturation down a notch or fiddle with the other LR controls but WB is fine on that one.

#1 and #3 look too cold to me too. If the camera was set to Cloudy WB instead of Daylight, it would probably be closer to #2 (or even warmer). I'm spewing this off the cuff and not testing it out so might be wrong.. but I think I use AWB + fix it in LR or cloudy the most, occasionally Flash even without flash if Cloudy is too warm. Daylight is just too cold most of the time.

The worst case scenario is of course having a wildly out of calibration monitor and then doing WB adjustments by eye on it..

 

[kokakaste2]

If you want to get "perfect" and "correct" white balance, take a look at this.
http://xritephoto.com/ph_product_overview.aspx?ID=1257

However I agree with others who pointed out that WB is more of art than science.

 

[arad85]

If you want to get "perfect" and "correct" white balance, take a look at this.
http://xritephoto.com/ph_product_overview.aspx?ID=1257

I have one of those. Expensive, but worth it IMHO for the ability to create camera profiles to try and get the colours right as well. To see what I mean, take a look at the images on this page: http://photo.andysheen.co.uk/technical/lightroom-raw-vs-dpp-raw-processing/

Colour accuracy isn't just about getting the white balance correct - it's also interpreting how the camera responds to different colours and correcting for that.

 

[cuthbert]

Thanks chaps, all very useful but your responses regarding the correction of the photograph are most interesting because to me, the Lightroom corrected version bares no resemblance to how the scene looked in real life and her skin tones don't look realistic at all (her skin isn't green, but it is pale white, not orange or brown).

i've uploaded another by-eye edit variation to warming up the tones as much as i can bare. is this any better? (it's in the first post to make comparison easier, just in case you missed it!)

Are you finding the new body is in need of a different profile than what you were used to?

I'm not too sure yet. I'm fairly certain it's the new Lightroom process which makes default raw colour balance look different from the 5D2, which is just how i'm used to doing things but to be honest, I've never really worried too much about white balance before because my style of processing is such that it induces a slight cast anyway - i've set the camera to daylight and just left it unless it looked obviously too warm or cold. most of my shots are processed with the default in-camera daylight value.

 

[arad85]

the Lightroom corrected version bares no resemblance to how the scene looked in real life

When you set the white balance, it isn't meant to make it look like it did when you took the picture, but how it would look under standard lighting.

and her skin tones don't look realistic at all (her skin isn't green, but it is pale white, not orange or brown).

In none of the edits is the skin green, nor white. They each have a more or less red tone to them (take a look at the RGB values).

i've uploaded another by-eye edit variation to warming up the tones as much as i can bare. is this any better? (it's in the first post to make comparison easier, just in case you missed it!)

Yes, it's almost got the card back to grey. What is interesting is that even in the auto adjusted image, there is a difference of R:G:B values on each of the 3 grey cards.

I'm not too sure yet. I'm fairly certain it's the new Lightroom process which makes default raw colour balance look different from the 5D2

So switch it to the 2010 process and see what it does....

 

[Richard King]

Also..

have you a calibrated screen and a colour neutral working environment

 

[cuthbert]

Thanks Andy,

I suppose part of the misapprehension I hold is that the idea of correcting the white balance is to get the tones of the scene looking as accurately as possible to how it was perceived in real life, as, with the lightroom correction, the only thing which is probably the right colour is the grey card, the moss and tree foliage was about as emerald green as it gets, certainly not the yellowish colour it is in the lightroom corrected version and when i look at the images again, i still think my original attempt to correct the balance is the most real to my eyes. i can't explain it, but the skintones in the lightroom version just look wrong to me.

i do indeed have a calibrated monitor, my one at work is also calibrated and I also view my photographs on a variety of displays to see how they look (since, most people viewing won't have a calibrated monitor) but even calibrated monitors seem to display colour differently (and our brains perceive it slightly differently also i'm sure).

i know you're supposed to portray kids with warmer tones, and often do it in my processing, but i wanted to try and portray the tones as close to how they were in real life as possible, really as an experiment. i guess the lightroom tool functions differently to how i had envisaged in that it makes everything look like it's been lit with 60w tungsten lamp!

 

[arad85]

Did you read the pages I linked to in post #13 above? When I did the experiments and saw what was happening, it all finally clicked into place.

 

[Richard King]

Did you read the pages I linked to in post #13 above? When I did the experiments and saw what was happening, it all finally clicked into place.

Your post sums it up well

Interestingly, you see what I see - a big shift in the way greens are dealt with

 

[cuthbert]

I had actually missed that somehow, very interesting. thank you. it actually looks like the 'camera standard' profile might be the culprit here, i've revisited the processing with the Adobe Standard 2012 process and added a processed picture to the first post. I think this is a good balance between skintone and environmental colour, i like that one the most i think.

 

[petersmart]

You may also have a problem inasmuch as your choice of location.

If your camera was set to Auto WB then it may have produced a picture which was overcompensated for the overall green surroundings.

Did you produce a custom WB at the scene using the white card?

If not the resulting changes in WB from the various programs could have been affected by this.

.

 

[kokakaste2]

I have one of those. Expensive, but worth it IMHO for the ability to create camera profiles to try and get the colours right as well. To see what I mean, take a look at the images on this page: http://photo.andysheen.co.uk/technical/lightroom-raw-vs-dpp-raw-processing/

Colour accuracy isn't just about getting the white balance correct - it's also interpreting how the camera responds to different colours and correcting for that.

I know, that is one of the things on my very long to buy list

 

[cuthbert]

I always leave my camera in Daylight WB, i've had Canon cameras for many years and early implementations of the auto white balance feature would often shift temperatures wildly for no apparent reason and because I do most of my work outside, i leave it there. I shoot raw and I use Lightroom to process my images as far as possible and finish in Photoshop. I've never noticed a shift in colour going from one to the other though?

 

[snigg]

When you set the white balance, it isn't meant to make it look like it did when you took the picture, but how it would look under standard lighting.



I thought that it was meant to still be true to the lighting conditions? as the eye can make out white in different lighting situations but the camera can't, so is trying to make white look white but still be true to the lighting the shot was taken in.

Just trying to get to grips with this subject so may be totally wrong.

 

[arad85]

I thought that it was meant to still be true to the lighting conditions? as the eye can make out white in different lighting situations but the camera can't, so is trying to make white look white but still be true to the lighting the shot was taken in.

The idea of white balance is to make white white by altering the ratio of R to G to B. If you shine a red light on a scene and balance a white card back to white it will remove the red cast to all the other colours too - returning their R:G:B mix back to what it would be under "standard" lighting conditions.

I don't see how you could balance white, but none of the other colours....

 

[rjbell]

There is a time and a place when white balance is important, but for me if it looks ok its good enough for me.

 

[snigg]

The idea of white balance is to make white white by altering the ratio of R to G to B. If you shine a red light on a scene and balance a white card back to white it will remove the red cast to all the other colours too - returning their R:G:B mix back to what it would be under "standard" lighting conditions.

I don't see how you could balance white, but none of the other colours....

given your red light shining on a white surface, the idea is not to turn that into something that looks as if it was shot in normal lighting conditions but for the shot to look like what it is, a red light shining on a white surface. Having white look like standard white in that situation would be daft.

What I'm understanding you as saying is, a camera in the above situation, setting the correct white balance would result in the white surface being matched to a perfect white colour? I'm saying it's not to do that but to give the impression that what you are seeing "if" seen in standard lighting would be white.

I agree you can not not affect the other colours when correcting WB but as the other colours are affected in a given lighting situation, just changing the white would be wrong anyway.

Whether the camera can do this well is another question but I think that is the aim rather than creating all pictures to look as if they were taken in standard lighting.

 

[HoppyUK]

There is a time and a place when white balance is important, but for me if it looks ok its good enough for me.

Good summary really. Colour balance is like chasing rainbows (LOL ). Yes, more art than science, but this is the science.

Technically, the colour of an object is the colour of the light reflected from it, so that varies a lot - sun, shade, candle light, flash, sunset, tungsten light, fluorescent light. All different, and our eyes automatically compensate, but cameras can't.

'Correct' white balance is defined as the colour of an object in bright noon-day sun. Any deviation from that and you won't be able to get all colours correct as per the camera's calibration. A shady green forest is a long way off.

All Lightroom does is take a known neutral reference (assuming your cards are neutral - prolly are, but some aren't) and make them equal in red/green/blue. Which should be spot on if shot under noon-day sun, but a shady forest obviously has a lot more green in it, so in fact what Lightroom has done is change the colour of the grey reference, as it was in that situation and everything else has shifted with it.

This is where the art of it all comes in. I use Lightroom as a starting reference, then go by eye.

I would just say, don't worry about it, if only because by the sounds of it what you're trying to do is technically impossible. Our eyes are very tolerant of colour shifts, but very intolerant of inconsistent colour, ie when processing a set of same subject, make sure they're all the same.

Only worry about strict accuracy when it really matters, like a bride's dress - if it's cream, don't let it go pink. This may make the groom's grey suit go off a bit, but sod him. If you're shooting a fashion catalogue or something, make sure you can control the light source, eg use flash, because you won't be able to get everything absolutely 100% accurate just by fiddling with a grey card in post.

 

[arad85]

given your red light shining on a white surface, the idea is not to turn that into something that looks as if it was shot in normal lighting conditions but for the shot to look like what it is, a red light shining on a white surface. Having white look like standard white in that situation would be daft.

But that's what setting white balance is - it sets the mix of R:G:B to be equal for the colour you choose. Whether this is right or not depends on what you are trying to achieve artistically. For example, I can't imagine wanting to get the WB correct when taking pictures in the "golden hour", but when I'm taking product shots of Ms arad85's creations, the WB had best be perfect.

I'm saying it's not to do that but to give the impression that what you are seeing "if" seen in standard lighting would be white.

But how do you do that unless you know the balance of the light source?

Whether the camera can do this well is another question but I think that is the aim rather than creating all pictures to look as if they were taken in standard lighting.

I'm not sure. If you set your camera to overcast/indoor/bright sunlight etc... they will all produce a different look to the image. All they will be doing is biasing R:G:B differently when "developing" the image. The idea of the different WB is to compensate for the spectral differences between the different light sources to make them identical (i.e. if you shoot a pic of someone inside and then outside, the colours will appear to be the same.

 

[snigg]

Andy I think I understand what you're saying now.

So why have a WB balance? why not a blue or green balance... what is the need to having whites looking perfect?

So really the only time to set a correct white balance would be if the shot included a white subject you wanted to look white?

 

[arad85]

what is the need to having whites looking perfect?

So that you get the correct colours for everything else.

So why have a WB balance? why not a blue or green balance

"True" white is R=G=B. What is "true" green? If it is R=0, G=255, B=0, how do you figure out what the amount of R and B should be?

 

[Gadget-Guy]

The other thing to remember is it also depends on the browser you use as to if you will see the correct colours of an image when viewing over web as described here http://www.petapixel.com/2012/06/25/is-your-browser-color-managed/

 

[HoppyUK]

Andy I think I understand what you're saying now.

So why have a WB balance? why not a blue or green balance... what is the need to having whites looking perfect?

So really the only time to set a correct white balance would be if the shot included a white subject you wanted to look white?

White balance is a reference - you've got to have something and as these things go, it's a good one. It's based on mid-day sunlight, it treats all primary colours equally, and that's what our eyes try to adjust the colour to even when the light is different.

And in practise, and bearing in mind the theory I mentioned above, when you get the whites properly white, everything else falls into place pretty well. It's really only when you a) go well outside the mid-day sun reference point, and b) also want 100% accuracy of all colours, that you'll find some colours/fabrics/tones/whatever won't behave absolutely right.

Get the main things right though, and it usually doesn't matter. Like the pics in the OP, there's quite a range of different colours there, but most of them look pretty good.

 

[snigg]

by jove i think he's got it...Cheers guys