# Help! Blue Images Look PURPLE!



## zero5odc (Jan 4, 2011)

Hello,

New to the forums here. I have been doing photography of cars and bikes  for many years and haven't really been too big on the forums. I come  here to ask for your help!! You guys have alot of great insight and  ideas and I'd love to see what you guys can do for me.

I have two images, both of the same bike and both the same LEDs on the  bike. Both are Blue. The Pictures were taken with a Canon EOS 50d and a  Nikon D40x.

The Purple Picture ( taken with Canon EOS 50 d "1.0s f/3.5 ISO:1000")
The Blue Picture ( taken with Nikon D40x "1.0s f/7.1 ISO:1600")

Now, all my Blue Pictures with the Canon LOOK Purple and all my Blue  pictures with the Nikon LOOK BLUE. Now, all the other colors with the  Canon look sharp, the Purple looks purple, the Green and Red look vivid  and lively but the Blue, Looks PURPLE! 

Any Ideas? HELP? Something? I know it has SOMETHING to do with the Blue  LEDs because Blue Cars during Daylight Look Blue. So Ideas? Help?  Something? Thanks!


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## zero5odc (Jan 4, 2011)

4 More Posts to Post my Pictures.


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## zero5odc (Jan 4, 2011)

3 More Post to Post Pictures.


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## zero5odc (Jan 4, 2011)

2 More Posts to Post Pictures. Sorry. Im new and it wont allow Pictures or Links.


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## zero5odc (Jan 4, 2011)




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## zero5odc (Jan 4, 2011)

DSC_0296 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

IMG_2940 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!


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## Overread (Jan 4, 2011)

"White Balance"

This is what is (most likely) different between the two camera bodies and I'm going to guess that you shot both on auto white balance? Typically speaking auto white balance does pretty well in most cases; though many cameras will have a slight lean - eg canons tend to be a little red and I think nikons a little more green/blue (I forget which). There are two ways to counter this:

1) Use manual white balance and a grey card to allow you to set the white balance for the shot manually in the given lighting. This will be different for each lighting situation you encounter - for something like the bike shot its easily done provided you remember to change it when the lighting chances - for something like action photography it can be more difficult should the subject be moving through changing lighting.

2) Shoot in RAW mode and adjust the white balance in editing. This method starts out sounding simple but can come with hidden costs. The first hidden cost is a small learning curve as you learn to edit the resulting shot - this takes a little while to get used to, but once done it becomes far faster and simpler. RAW mode lets you adjust the white balance freely using two slider controls - this can be done with JPEGs but takes longer and can be very tricky to pull off and look correct.

The hidden cost of this is colour calibration - because you're setting the colour based on your own eye balling of the shot (much of the time) it is greatly beneficial to have a hardware based screen calibration setup (eg a spyder 3). This allows you to know that your screen is showing you the "true" colours so that as you edit and adjust you know the true colours are what you are being shown.


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## zero5odc (Jan 4, 2011)

Hello,

  Thanks for the quick reply!
  I shot both on tungsten white balance. I thought it would be the white balance as well. Should I set it manually to like 6000k? 
  I shot the images in JPEG and RAW. 
  Now, this spyder 3. I looked into it briefly, what does this actually do?
  Should I take the RAW photos and edit them in Photoshop? Whats the best bet to change the color balance? I didnt shot this in Auto balance for nighttime but I have played with changing it manually to 6000 or 8000 k and still on this EOS 50d it still looks purple?
  Thanks a lot!


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## Overread (Jan 4, 2011)

Tungsten is the wrong setting (most likely) because the LED lights arn't tungsten light sources - auto might well have given you a more accurate white balance in that given situation. 

The spyder 3 sits on your screen and reads the light that comes off it - it then allows you to build a profile up which is applied to the screen to ensure that the light it gives off is colour correct (it will also adjust brightness and contrast as well). This is something that only a machine can do and not your own eyes because our eyes are subjective in how we see - a very bright screen and our eyes will adapt to cope so that the screen is not seen as bright - whilst colour gets more complex  still (sometimes changing based on what we "think" we should see - othertimes influenced by surrounding colours). 
In short the machine is needed to make the proper adjustments. This allows you to remove any colourcast that your screen might well have and to ensure that you're seeing the proper colours on screen.


As for what values to set in editing for the white balance this is an area of two approaches. The first is eyeballing it - that is to tweak the sliders until the photo has a pleasing colour to your eye and much of the time this approach is enough for most people. The other approach is to know the colour temperature of the light you are working with - each light source will have its own colour temperature and if you know that value and if you have only one light source (or light source type - so that all the colour temperatures are the same*) then you can enter the fixed values to get the proper colours

* note if you have different light sources (eg you have a flash and a regular lightbulb both lighting the photo) then often one can use gels/filters to colour the light (mostly from the flash) so that the colour temperatures of both are the same)


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## zero5odc (Jan 4, 2011)

The white balance was set to 3200k.
  I used the Auto White Balance setting NOT on these images but another set and I got the same results again.  Same purple glow off the bike and NOT blue.
  I just went and tried to edit the photo IN Photoshop and went to adjustments and variations and went ahead and tried to tweak the image a little but it didnt look too good. I went into levels and tried to mess with it again and it seems like I'm just washing the image with blue and not tweaking the set colors really. Its so hard because of the GLOW of the lights. 
  Why do you think the Nikon shots Blue Clear and the canon doesnt? Both set to ALMOST the same settings really. Same white balance and same shutter speed? The Nikon picks the Blue up so easy while the Canon picks up the better glow yet its still purple ?
  Again, Thank you so much for helping me! You are really helping me out. Thanks again


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## Overread (Jan 4, 2011)

You might find some help in these articles:

Understanding White Balance
White Balance
Levels in Photoshop -- Part I (this is a 4 part article so do scroll all the way to the bottom for the follow on link)

And the main site for each of those articles:
Digital Photography Tutorials
Ron Bigelow Photography Articles

Both are great resources and well worth spending time reading up on.


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## zero5odc (Jan 4, 2011)

Auto White Balance Setting.


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## KmH (Jan 4, 2011)

The scene you are shooting has mixed lighting types. Something experienced shooters avoid like the plague, because any white balance setting is then a compromise.


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## zero5odc (Jan 4, 2011)

Why does the Nikon Shot look so Blue then??


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## Garbz (Jan 5, 2011)

I can't see the images, but it's likely something to do with the way different manufacturers cameras render the images differently. Colour isn't an absolute when you're selling a product. It needs to be a pleasing image, not just technically accurate reproduction. 

Try opening both RAW files in Adobe CameraRAW, they should provide you with much more consistent colours than the JPEGs from either camera.


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## zero5odc (Jan 5, 2011)

Hey,

Try viewing the files now. Let me know if you can. Thanks


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