# How to master white balance?



## Vik880 (Jun 20, 2013)

I've noticed a lot of critiques of photos on this forum(mine included) have this phrase somewhere in there: "your white balance is way off"

Perhaps my thinking of what white balance is is wrong, i use it as way to create the depth of colors that i saw when i shot the photo so in pping i'm trying to closely recreate the scene. But how do you do that perfectly? I know the monitor you have has an impact, not sure how significant of one. Any insight on how to nail this very very important detail of photography??


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## Trever1t (Jun 20, 2013)

First you can set accurate WB in camera by using a Greay card and Custom WB. Or if you shoot raw you can shoot a grey card for reference later (for each change of light) in post process. Having a CALIBRATED monitor does make a huge difference as well.


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## jwbryson1 (Jun 20, 2013)

Trever1t said:


> First you can set accurate WB in camera by using a Greay card and Custom WB. Or if you shoot raw you can shoot a grey card for reference later (for each change of light) in post process. Having a CALIBRATED monitor does make a huge difference as well.




^^^  This.


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## amolitor (Jun 20, 2013)

First, you must master yourself.

Or, what Trever1t said, that'll work too. I have to say that it's a bit of a mystery to be why a single reference is enough, why does grey work by itself? Why don't you need a red card, a green card, and a blue card? I dunno, but I guess mostly you don't.


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## Trever1t (Jun 20, 2013)

Perhaps one of the really scientific minds here can answer that, I can't I just know it works!


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## Derrel (Jun 20, 2013)

Sometimes you do not want an "accurate" WB. In fact, many times you want to set the camera manually to a pre-set "Daylight" or "Sunny" WB, and then to allow the warmth or coolness of the light to cause the pictures to look warmer--more yellowish, or orange, or pinkish, or in the evening, cool blue. Using AUTO white balance, the camera will usually try to cancel out the beautiful light of early morning or late afternoon, and your photos will look dull and uninspired. As blue hour approaches, the light is cool..almost blue...if the camera is allowed to run in AUTO white balance, all that magic will disappear. In the spring and summer, we often have odd "*storm light*", which carries with it very odd hues, and rainbows are often present; this light is best shot using Daylight WB, never,ever auto or custom.


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## Vik880 (Jun 20, 2013)

amolitor said:


> First, you must master yourself.



Yes sensei.


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## KmH (Jun 20, 2013)

amolitor said:


> why does grey work by itself? Why don't you need a red card, a green card, and a blue card? I dunno, but I guess mostly you don't.



Gray works by itself because grey is equal parts of red, green, and blue and has no color cast. R=100, G=100, B=100 is a tone of grey. 18% gray is R=209, G=209, B=209.

White and black are the end points of the gray scale - equal values of RGB. White: R=255, G=255, B=255. Black: R=0, G=0, B=0.


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## amolitor (Jun 20, 2013)

A decent grey card is neutral in color. A bad one is not.

Even shooting RAW taking a reference shot of a good quality grey or white card will serve as a useful reference for what the ambient lighting actually was. That, together with judicious use of taste and the needs of the picture, will get you where you need to go.


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## Vladyxa (Jun 20, 2013)

Trever1t said:


> First you can set accurate WB in camera by using a Greay card and Custom WB. Or if you shoot raw you can shoot a grey card for reference later (for each change of light) in post process. Having a CALIBRATED monitor does make a huge difference as well.



What would your recommendation be for monitor calibration? 



Derrel said:


> Sometimes you do not want an "accurate" WB. In fact, many times you want to set the camera manually to a pre-set "Daylight" or "Sunny" WB, and then to allow the warmth or coolness of the light to cause the pictures to look warmer--more yellowish, or orange, or pinkish, or in the evening, cool blue. Using AUTO white balance, the camera will usually try to cancel out the beautiful light of early morning or late afternoon, and your photos will look dull and uninspired. As blue hour approaches, the light is cool..almost blue...if the camera is allowed to run in AUTO white balance, all that magic will disappear. In the spring and summer, we often have odd "*storm light*", which carries with it very odd hues, and rainbows are often present; this light is best shot using Daylight WB, never,ever auto or custom.



This would not apply to shooting in RAW, right? 
Then WB can be changed in post-processing.


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## Majeed Badizadegan (Jun 20, 2013)

robertwatcher said:


> I personally use Auto WB for most everything and when I recognize light that I am shooting in that needs to be corrected, then I may use one of the presets like Tungsten or Florescent or Shade to slightly warm up cold outdoor light.
> .



Why would you shoot in AWB when you could shoot the same WB? This way, you will be able to see the subtle changes of light as they happen over the span of a day, as Derrel mentioned. 

A gray card is useful because of the digital darkroom. In the digital darkroom, if you've used a gray card, you can sample the gray card that you photographed in your scene and obtain the  "correct" white balance. There are many times when I've been shooting a landscape, down in a canyon, or in the waning hours of the day, where neither AWB or Daylight WB is the correct approach. The easiest and most technical approach would be the use of a gray card in these situations.


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## Derrel (Jun 20, 2013)

Vladyxa said:
			
		

> This would not apply to shooting in RAW, right?
> Then WB can be changed in post-processing.



I think even when shooting in raw mode, that a white balance should be set, especially when the lighting is "full-spectrum deficient", meaning incandescent, sodium-vapor, tungsten, or "oddball".  In oddball lighting conditions, I think it's worth the 3 seconds it takes to set a white balance that is at least "close" to the right one. The camera's internal processing needs to read the Bayer array's RGB data and convert it to something approaching the "correct" color. Nikons are reading the red,green,and blue color data from objects, and also analyzing the reflectivity of objects, as well as reading the overall light value in EV, plus analyzing brightness patterns; having a white balance that actually is at least somewhat close, or at the very least, stable from frame to frame, makes for easier post processing, and I think, might lead to better exposures.

I think in very dim, low-light level situations under say, dim street lights for example, it's better to have a fixed white balance that is even somewhat close, as opposed to say, the utterly WRONG WB, like say Fluorescent set.

Some cameras actually "cook" the RAW data a bit, before it is written to the card. And regardless if a camera cooks the RAW data or not, on EVERY, single frame, the camera must perform a demosaic of the raw data, and "fill in the blanks" for color data that is missing; I personally think it's better to have a fixed, more-or-less correct white balance when one is after the most-accurate and most-consistent color and the best image quality. We're talking about what I consider a "best practices" approach, as opposed to a what-the-heck, let's let it run in AUTO all day and all night long approach, and fix it after the fact. So, no, I do not think what I said above does not apply to shooting in RAW mode. I think it's better to strive for a higher standard at all times.


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## Vladyxa (Jun 20, 2013)

*Derrel*,

Thanks a lot for detailed explanation!

Back to your previous post. I always though that to give warmth to colors I should be setting my WB to "Cloudy". Was I wrong?


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## hirejn (Jun 20, 2013)

The answer is so easy, but people fight it. Use a ColorChecker Passport. Done.


It's easy, but it involves some steps and it requires you to shoot in RAW and use Lightroom. It also requires you to purchase the Passport, which is about $100. The reason color is a problem is not only because of monitor differences but differences in how cameras record color. White balance is only part of perfect color. Even two copies of the same model can record color slightly differently. And cameras struggle particularly with blues and purples. When you take a shot, do you later have perfect memory of exactly what each color should look like? You can spend time getting it to what you think is good, fiddling with WB and sliders, but it won't be perfect. If you don't have a perfect color memory, how could you edit to match the colors you shot? What is the exact purple of the bridesmaids' dresses? What is the exact pink of the flowers in the bouquet? Exactly how white was the shirt, or did it have a slight tint? How red was that tulip? Even if you had a sample of the color in front of you, how would you edit to match it on screen, and how much time would it take to match each shot to each sample manually? Is close good enough for you? You'd just be guessing. Also, with JPEG, the camera makes decisions about color and applies its own color spaces and default profiles, which are not as good.


The Passport enables you to fix this automatically. It gives you a white balance target for starters. It also enables you to create a profile for the given spectrum of light. When you apply the profile in Lightroom, you can see the colors snap into place. Then, if you have a calibrated monitor, you can hold the ColorChecker next to the image of the ColorChecker on the screen and it will essentially be a perfect match. So, once you create your profiles, perfect color is a matter of two steps: clicking a WB patch and applying the profile. You can then sync the profile and WB across a group of images. Go to xritephoto.com to learn more.


If you don't have money for a CC or LR, get a white card. Use the white card to create a custom WB in camera. This will get you close but not as good as the ColorChecker. White balance and color profiles are not the same. The color profile applies to a given spectrum of light. Daylight is daylight. So one profile covers it. The WB, however, may change at different times of day or in different locations. RAW makes it so much easier to perfect color but you can work around it. It just won't be as good.


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## Ysarex (Jun 20, 2013)

hirejn said:


> The answer is so easy, but people fight it. Use a ColorChecker Passport. Done.



:thumbup::cheer::thumbup:

Further up in the thread Amolitor noted: "I have to say that it's a bit of a mystery to be why a single reference  is enough, why does grey work by itself? Why don't you need a red card,  a green card, and a blue card? I dunno, but I guess mostly you don't."

As hirejn further notes the Passport provides those colors as well and will allow you to create an input profile for your camera and you can start taking advantage of the real precision that digital tech affords.

Joe


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## Helen B (Jun 20, 2013)

KmH said:


> ...
> 18% gray is R=209, G=209, B=209.



That's about 18% down from white - ie about 82% reflectance. What is commonly called an 18% grey card is 18% reflectance, and after applying an sRGB or Adobe RGB profile it generally translates to around 118 to 120 - ie roughly half way  between 0 and 255. That's because it is considered to be perceptually about half way between white and black, and both sRGB and Adobe RGB use perceptual scaling. 



robertwatcher said:


> Just to be technically correct here:
> 
> One of the biggest misconceptions that photographers have - based on  what others state as fact - - - is that a gray card is designed to be  used to obtain correct White Balance settings. Gray cards are 18% gray  and were designed to determine "Exposure" settings of normal caucasian  subjects or grassy areas in landscape, that fall roughly into 18% gray  tonality. A gray card is not neutral in colour.



It should be neutral, or close to it if it is called a grey card. Even the ones that are marketed for exposure should be neutral, for good technical reasons. Not all grey cards are designed for exposure, some are indeed designed for white balance. Grey cards that are marketed for white balance should be (and usually are) fairly neutral - as neutral as good white cards. They need not be 18% grey and often aren't - they are often lighter. 

(As an aside, one of the earliest grey cards designed for exposure, the Neutrowe from 1939, was 14% reflectance, because this was found to correlate the best with the average reflectance of the test scenes that the researchers used. 14% is still considered a good value for 'average' scene reflectance.)


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## Helen B (Jun 20, 2013)

hirejn said:


> The answer is so easy, but people fight it. Use a ColorChecker Passport. Done.
> 
> 
> It's easy, but it involves some steps and it requires you to shoot in RAW and use Lightroom. It also requires you to purchase the Passport, which is about $100. The reason color is a problem is not only because of monitor differences but differences in how cameras record color. White balance is only part of perfect color. Even two copies of the same model can record color slightly differently. And cameras struggle particularly with blues and purples. When you take a shot, do you later have perfect memory of exactly what each color should look like? You can spend time getting it to what you think is good, fiddling with WB and sliders, but it won't be perfect. If you don't have a perfect color memory, how could you edit to match the colors you shot? What is the exact purple of the bridesmaids' dresses? What is the exact pink of the flowers in the bouquet? Exactly how white was the shirt, or did it have a slight tint? How red was that tulip? Even if you had a sample of the color in front of you, how would you edit to match it on screen, and how much time would it take to match each shot to each sample manually? Is close good enough for you? You'd just be guessing. Also, with JPEG, the camera makes decisions about color and applies its own color spaces and default profiles, which are not as good.
> ...



Remember that Passport does not produce an ICC camera profile, it produces a proprietary Lightroom/ACR profile. There are other ways of doing it. You can produce a true ICC profile using freeware like CoCa and one of the targets CoCa supports. There is also the Datacolor SpyderChekr which is a little more sophisticated than the Passport, but more expensive. It produces HSL adjustment layers. I have used all three and of them, I generally prefer a true ICC profile via CoCa. These are not the only solutions, but they are three of the least expensive.


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## amolitor (Jun 21, 2013)

I woke up this morning and realized that if you truly color profile your camera, you are now color managed from "reality" color space to the print, back into that same notional "reality" color space.

What's interesting about THIS is that while it probably lets you make the bride's dress white in the print, or the shampoo bottle print out at exactly the manufacturer designated Pantone shade, what will happen by default is that the bride's dress prints out the _color it actually was_. That's quite different than what the "your white balance is off!" crowd think color management is for.

Making the whites come out white is one thing, and while TPF tends to push it a little hard, it's not stupid at all.
It's also not the same, at all, as making the colors come out _accurate_.

ETA: Under the harsh light of coffee, I see that this still ain't right.

You're always profiling the camera plus a lighting arrangement, whether you use a white card, grey card, or some color chart plus software. So I see at least two quite different things you can do:

- profile your camera under a reference light source, and just use that profile. This will, modulo a suitable reference light, let you easily make prints that look just like whatever it was, light temperature, local color shifts, reflected light and all. This is what I called _accurate_ above.

- profile your camera under the actual lighting setup you're using to shoot thing (Helen, is this you?) which will let you make prints in which the shampoo bottle is by golly the pantone shade of the pigments the bottle people put into the plastic. This does NOT automatically correct local color shifts. The red apple is going to reflect red light onto the white vase, so that part of the white vase still looks pink.

The latter is what a white/grey card approximates.

I tend to think that some middle road is actually what looks best, generally. I have a vague theory that we pick up on lighting cues from pictures, and our visual machinery corrects colors (and expects to) in pictures the same as it does in real life, but in a muted and mild fashion because we're one step removed from reality. So the white dress in the shade should be pushed away from blue, but you need to leave a little in there so that we don't think it looks weird.

This is rather self serving, though, because I also believe firmly in just dorking around under the command of my own superb taste and visual sensibilities until it looks right. This process, it is clear to me, is vastly superior to your fancy Technology and Algorithms.


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## Helen B (Jun 21, 2013)

The only time I really want colours that are as accurate as possible is when I am in controlled light, so I make the profile in that light. Depending on which method you use to profile, you may be able to apply the profile to other light sources. The profile is usually applied after white balancing, because the raw data need not be used to create the profile. Sometimes you have the ability to make the profile from two sample images - tungsten and daylight, for example.

In practice it is often something of a fool's errand, because the difficult colours get so mangled later in the process when they are squeezed into the display / printer colour space and we end up matching the CMYK proofs to the object itself, or as near as possible. (Getting a good spectrographic sample of a 3-D glossy object is not easy - the eye does it best.) It's still good to start with the best you can manage, if accuracy is important. Oh, and camera profiles are rarely the perfect answer to everything - they have to be made from a chip chart that has its own limitations. 

The reflections of coloured light from other objects does cause a problem, as you surmised. Glossy dark-coloured surfaces can sometimes be an even bigger pain than polished metal in this respect - ie picking up the surrounding colours. If possible I use white cards to prevent these problems and I confess that I comp in parts of extra images shot with white cards that would be in frame just so that the colours are unpolluted by the surrounding objects. Some seemingly simple images are composites of ten or more source images just for the reason of avoiding colouration from reflections.


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## amolitor (Jun 21, 2013)

I know a guy at EFI and he agrees. Color management is all very fun, but there's so many moving parts to get to the final print that someone's gonna drop the ball. You work like a dog and get it all perfect, and then some dope buys a trainload of paper that's a different shade and 750,000 issues of the magazine are printed out with your ad plus an attractive yellowish cast.

Still, one does one's best, right?


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