Re: Understanding color balancing
Re: Understanding color balancing
- Subject: Re: Understanding color balancing
- From: Karsten Krüger <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 23:34:49 +0100
Before trying to solve things in a complicated way, just try to
understand what happens when you take a picture with your digicam.
Take a look at your scene. Imagine a house with white walls on a
sunny day. For our eye the wall which gets sunshine is white. The
wall which is in the shaddows is white. But reality is different. The
sunny wall has a white of about 5000K, the one in the shaddows has
about 9000K. If you whitbalance your camera to the first, the later
will have a bue-ish cast, if you whitebalance on the second, the
first will appear yellow-ish. This is not solveable. Those
adjustments done by the human eye are based on expectation, not on
perception.
You have a very nice scene. Outdoor. Children playing. Grass, water,
blue sky. You do everything right - apperture, shutter, whitebalance,
you even did a camera profile for this light situation. But wait -
there is a cloud. All colors change, less red, more blue, less
overall light. You have to change apperture, shutter and whitebalance
- and your profile is no more valid. Your camera has exposure
programs ? Be carefull, my Canon EOS 20D sometimes does strange
things. You do have Automatic Whitepoint ? It tries to find the most
intense light and adjusts to it. Even if it comes from green grass an
dis nowhere near white. This is 100% guessing. Turn it off.
Your friend looks so cute during candlelight dinner. You want the
best picture you can imagine. You really do everything for this
picture - including whitebalancing for candle light. You are an
expert - so you do a profile again. Then you look at the results:
cold colors - all feelings gone. Why ? Whitebalancing and profiling
neutralize the influence of light. But this is exactly what you don't
want to happen at a candle light dinner. Better forget about all that
technology and go for the ***real*** thing ;-)
Bottom line:
- if you take pictures in a controlled environment (like a studio)
Do a whitebalance on a greycard. Do a profile for this specific
setup. Start taking pictures. (and perhaps do your RAW processing in
Capture One software).
- If you can not controll the the environment (like outdoor scenes)
Setup your camera to manual mode. Use the histogram function to
find a suitable exposure setting. Select a suitable fixed whitepoint.
Take a picture from a CaliCube for later adjustments. Start taking
pictures. Visually process your RAW data on a computer with a
calibrated monitor and a correct color setup. Use the reference
picture with the calicube as a starter. It will give you good basic
settings for processing the rest of your pictures.
Karl mentioned some manuals in his downloads area. They contain more
details on how to get going quickly. A strongly recommended reading.
You need to register for downloading. But don't be affraid of
spamming. I got about 2 eMails during the last 6 months from them.
http://www.basiccolor.de/english/index_E.htm
Thanks,
Karsten
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