# How do you get 'warmer' colours?



## cfaulds (Dec 28, 2009)

So on christmas we had all the family around, and i took a picture of mum, dad and sister.

When i first looked at it i thought it was a great photo.

I then put it into lightroom, and adjusted the exposure and stuff, and my god! The photo looked sooo much better, it had much more vibrant colours and looked a lot warmer!

How would i do this with the camera?


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## Dao (Dec 28, 2009)

Adjust the WB and may need a custom white balance (WB).

However, I would prefer shoot it with the correct WB and adjust it during post processing (PP).  And shooting RAW maybe even better if you planning to change WB in PP.


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## Mulewings~ (Dec 28, 2009)

I don't know what the settings are on your camera, as I have a Nikon D40.  But I am able to change 'settings' for photos in the menu.
I can add more vibrant settings for shooting.
Indoor lighting can be tricky and I'm sure someone else has much more knowledge than I do on this!


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## Goontz (Dec 28, 2009)

Adjusting your white balance setting is what makes it "warmer" or "cooler." Vibrant colors could be saturation or something. Are you shooting in RAW or JPG? I'm not familiar with Canon, but there should be somewhere you can adjust sharpness, saturation, etc in the camera if you're shooting in JPG.


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## Derrel (Dec 28, 2009)

A global white balance shift is one way to a warmer color balance. ANother way is to make adjustments in the "Selective Color" correction area. There, you have much more control over the hues which will be affected, since the adjustment is selective, and not a global adjustment. For example, if the whites are too cool, in Selective Color, you can warm up just the whites; in a simple white balance adjustment, everything will be shifted.


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## cfaulds (Dec 28, 2009)

Im getting the 'gist' here that its to do with the WB. I heard to do this, you should take a picture of something that is 100% white ? In PP i made the photo look so much better, and so im going to fiddle around with the settings on my camera.

Why do you all have Nikons!!! lol


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## cfaulds (Dec 28, 2009)

Hmmm i cant seem to find anywhere where you can manually adjust the saturation/brightness/hue/contrast etc... Its a mid-range camera and so im guessing you may need a 'pro' camera to do that?

Theres a lot of automatic settings like standard/portrait/landscape/night/sport etc.... and cloudy/tungsten/sunny etc.....

I guess its just going to have to be PP then....


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## Shockey (Dec 28, 2009)

Take it off Auto white balance and put it on Cloudy white balance, presto warmer colors.


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## kundalini (Dec 28, 2009)

Yes, as said set your WB to Cloudy.  

Also, if you're using flash, you can add 1/4, 1/2 or full cut CTO gels in the front of the flash head.


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## Sherman Banks (Dec 28, 2009)

If you're shooting RAW, there is no need to adjust any of the settings other than white balance because Lightroom will just discard that info. Some cameras have the ability to do a WB adjustment to the presets by pushing them more amber/blue.  Read your manual to see if it's available on your camera as it's a pretty useful tool.


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## cfaulds (Dec 28, 2009)

I can set my own White balance, and i think if i install the software that came with the camera, I can change the presets there? Is that what you mean - and so adjust them to what i think they should be. I would do this if i knew what i was doing, but im not that 'experienced'.

Also, could you give me a summary of why you would shoot in RAW? I know that it gives you more flexibility in editing and i know what it is - unprocessed data, but why would you want to shoot in it?

Thanks for all the comments! Much appreciated!

Callum


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## Sherman Banks (Dec 28, 2009)

cfaulds said:


> I can set my own White balance, and i think if i install the software that came with the camera, I can change the presets there? Is that what you mean - and so adjust them to what i think they should be.



Shouldn't involve any software, it is a setting on the camera.  For instance, if I choose Auto WB on my camera, I can hold my WB button and rotate my front command dial to push it amber or blue.  I'm not familiar with Canon's functionality but it's something you may want to look into.



> Also, could you give me a summary of why you would shoot in RAW? I know that it gives you more flexibility in editing and i know what it is - unprocessed data, but why would you want to shoot in it?



You answered your own question, flexibility in editing.  I shoot in RAW so I can correct any white balance/exposure issues during editing if necessary.  As much as I would like to shoot smaller files and do less editing, I like knowing that I can bring up an exposure by a few stops without severely degrading the image (14bit uncompressed RAW).  Plus, lightroom allows you to apply the camera calibration profile to the raw file afterwards which still gets you something similar to what you see on the LCD.


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## GenPalmer (Dec 30, 2009)

Callum - I shoot Canon, and yes you can chose your white balance using the software (Digital Photo Professional in my case) that came with your camera if you shoot in RAW. There are pre-set values you can chose from (same as your camera, i.e. cloudy, sunny, etc.) or you can tweak your photo manually.

Another thing a photography instructor recently mentioned to me, and I know this sounds absolutely ridiculous, is to shoot in warmer light (sunrise/sunset if outdoors or through a window(?)). I know it's obvious, but it was a "duh!" moment for me so I thought I'd share.

Good luck!


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