White balance Q

divamum

On my xsi I'm setting the white balance manually as per manual instructions, but when I upload them onto the computer I'm still seeing a slight colour cast.

The way I usually "check" wb on the computer to see if it was accurate is not to trust my eyes - neither of my monitors is calibrated - but instead to use the "auto color" feature in either picasa or PS - I figure if it "sees" a cast, then there probably is one.

I'm using mixed light, but I thought that shouldn't matter as long as I set the wb for the situation...?

TIA for any clues how to proceed!

ETA: I'm using a piece of ordinary typing paper as my "white" item to photograph when I set the balance, and in general the images are consistently coming up ever so slightly too warm no matter how many times I reset the WB.

pathfinder

I find the white balance settings on my camera of rather little utility - I prefer to shoot in AWB in RAW, and then balance in Adobe RAW converter or LR2.

However, IF you want to shoot color corrected jpgs that are truly color corrected, I think you need to consider creating a custom white balance setting. Jpgs and color balancing are very sensitive to a correct exposure, even 1/3 of a stop can make difference.

If you want to shoot jpgs that are white balanced correctly, I think you need to consider one of the various white balancing tools like the Expodisc, a WhiBal card, the Balance Better reflector, or the SpectraSnap filter. All work well and are easy to use.

The Exposdisc, is a filter like apparatus that you place in front of your lens, and then shoot an image, that creates a neutral gray jpg in your camera that you then utilize with the custom white balance settings in your camera. The Spectrasnap is a plastic cover tha loads over your lens like and Exposdisc to shot a gray jpg.

The BalanceSmarter reflector, from balancesmarter.com, is a spring type reflector with a neutral gray and a white side, that one can shoot a frame of for that gray jpg to use in a custom white balance in camera again.

WhiBal cards and others devices are incorporated in your image along a lower edge to allow white blancing in Photoshop after the fact.

They all work better than nothing and I think are frequently much, much better than the fixed color balance settings in my camera.

I wrote a bit about this here

If your monitor is not calibrated, you need to read the pixel data in a white, a gray, or a black field and see if the pixels read as white (255,255,255) or gray ( 128,128,128 ) or black ( 5,5,5 ) All three channels should be equal values for a true neutral.

divamum

Pathfinder -

I am embarrassed to confess what I have just realised in the last few minutes: it was user error :hide

I was indeed going through the correct process to set a manual WB... but I'd forgotten to switch the darned WB mode back to CUSTOM instead of AWB.

Boy, do I feel dumb....

However, all the info above is supremely helpful anyway, so it wasn't typed in vain!

Thanks so much

jeffreaux2

PF gave you some great advice. Diva, if you arent shooting RAW yet, you really should give it a try.....(don't you have Lightroom?)...as I think you would appreciate the latitude you gain when processing from the RAW file.

Also....my Canon XTi tends to look a little on the cooler side of what looks right to me even when using a custom white balance. I correct this to what "looks" right to me when I adjust WB in my RAW editor(Lightroom) on a calibrated monitor. Certainly a piece of software can measure a color and set it to white....perfectly, but we live in an imperfect world where the imperfections are more often than not part of the story. Trust your eyes.....not the eyedropper!:D

Remember....you are the artist here...not adobe, canon, or picasa!!!

divamum

jeffreaux2 wrote:

PF gave you some great advice. Diva, if you arent shooting RAW yet, you really should give it a try.....(don't you have Lightroom?)...as I think you would appreciate the latitude you gain when processing from the RAW file.

Also....my Canon XTi tends to look a little on the cooler side of what looks right to me even when using a custom white balance. I correct this to what "looks" right to me when I adjust WB in my RAW editor(Lightroom) on a calibrated monitor. Certainly a piece of software can measure a color and set it to white....perfectly, but we live in an imperfect world where the imperfections are more often than not part of the story. Trust your eyes.....not the eyedropper!:D

Remember....you are the artist here...not adobe, canon, or picasa!!!

Thanks Jeff, as always. I trust my eyes in terms of artistic effect (well, more or less!), but the monitor situation makes it tricky - I really need to calibrate the monitors at some point so I CAN trust what my eyes see. The laptop is good, but tends a little towards pale and cool (esp if on battery power), and the desktop, while more accurate, tends towards dark and heavily saturated, so I have to kind of "guesttimate" in between them! That's the main reason I use the ps software to double check levels/colour/contrast just to see if I'm in the right ballpark.

And yeah, raw. I have no idea why I keep that one on the "get around to it" list instead of just DOING IT! :thwak In my sort-of defense, the wb thing was associated with the current SOOC challenge so jpg was more appropriate anyway (epsecially since I discovered that the in-camera sharpening on the xsi is INCREDIBLE - that combined with the 50mm 1.8 at f8 and it's sharper than any picture I've taken... EVER. But I digress....)

Must. Start. Shooting. Raw.

Thanks!

pathfinder

Just wait until you see how your images look when properly capture sharpened in RAW. Capture sharpening in RAW doesn't get a lot of press, but is really quite effective. I won't leave home without it!

jeffreaux2

pathfinder wrote:

Just wait until you see how your images look when properly capture sharpened in RAW. Capture sharpening in RAW doesn't get a lot of press, but is really quite effective. I won't leave home without it!

Yeah?...not only that, but white balance issues really become a thing of the past....and the latitudes with exposure adjustments....and the ability to REALLY control highlights and shadows.....and color adjustments....and....and....and ....and all that is non-destructive so you can easily go back to the original and give it an entirely different look....whenever....forever.

Diva....if you are serious about this "hobby", and since you already have one of the best software sets available, LIghtroom, at your disposal....you REALLY...should take advantage of all that your camera has to offer you in an image. Just do it....and I promise....later...Ill only say "I told ya so" once!:D

Trust me on this one!

divamum

jeffreaux2 wrote:

Image. Just do it....and I promise....later...Ill only say "I told ya so" once!:D

Trust me on this one!

Ok, Jeff

::puts on tin hat and waits to be told::

Well, either I missed doing something, or it's just WAY easier than I thought. Clicked on exposure button to adjust it up a tad, added some vibrancy and saturation to taste and... er... that was it. Is that really it?! I'm sure I MUST have missed a step somewhere. Really I am. Because I can't possibly have been so intimidated by something so easy...??! (Er.... that's my story and I'm sticking to it?)


I guess I need to pick up a couple more SD cards so I have enough space to shoot enormo-images everyday... lol (at least THOSE I can find cheaply!)

Now, pathfinder "Capture Sharpened". Meaning....? Will my xsi's in-camera functions affect a RAW image too - I thought it was only jpgs?

And last question (for tonight ): while the raw work really was absurdly easy in Lightroom, I DID find one weird anomaly: I still like using Picasa as my quickie catalog (it just fits how I scan for images when looking for things - I like the layout and the way it displays on my monitor), but when I would export a raw as a jpg (saving to the same folder with a different name) it sometimes took several attempts before Picasa could "see" it. Anybody ever have that problem (and/or clues to fix?) I'm on a windows machine using Vista.

Thanks all - you guys are the best!

pathfinder

Your RAW files are not sharpened until they get to the RAW converter. In LR2 or Adobe RAW there is a series of sliders precisely for capture sharpening, restoring the sharpness lost due to digital conversion by your sensor.

It should look something like this in ARC



The trick here, is that you MUST be looking at the image at 100% - when you see the image at 100% ( you can quickly enlarge the image by using ctrl-+ keys ) and hold down the option ( alt ) key, the image is displayed in grayscale, and when you use the mask slider, you can see where the mask is that determines what is sharpened and what is not real time. I do not usually change the radius or the detail much at all.

This will really sharpen up your images if they were in focus to begin with.

Then you can go on to the chromatic aberration correction. You will be surprised what lenses have significant chromatic aberration and which ones do not. I have some Canon Ls that do routinely need chromatic aberration correction ( 24 T&S and a 24-105 IS L ) and some that rarely do ( some of my Tamron lenses rarely need corrrection - not what I would have expected )

Sharpening and correction for chromatic aberration will improve your images technical quality

divamum

Thanks again, Pathfinder.

Next question: how do I open ACR, and how do I get PS to read my CR2 files? I KNOW ACR is on the computer since when I first tried out LR, PS would only open the jpg files I'd opened in LR into ACR. So the software is here, I just can't find it and how to access it.

Problem #2: when I try to open a CR2 in PS, it says ""could not complete your request because it is not the right kind of document"

LR can read them all perfectly, no problems at all and, of course, I can do similar functions there, but I'd also like to be able to use CS3 when appropriate too. Do I need some kind of an extra plug-in or update for CS3 to read cr2 files generated by the xsi?

(I read over this and realise it's like a foreign language of acronyms - OY! :giggle)

Edited to add: I just worked on a cr2 in LR and exported it as a jpg, then opened it in PS... where CS3 opened it in the Raw editor. I'm so confused :confused

pathfinder

In Bridge, when you see a RAW file you want to edit, typing ctrl+R will open the RAW file in ACR IN BRIDGE. When you are done editing in ACR, click "done", and you are finished. Fast and easy. Or you can then open the file in PS.

IN BRIDGE, when you select your RAW file, typing ctrl+O, opens the RAW file in ACR IN PHOTOSHOP. It took me a while to understand why I should care if the file is opened in ACR IN Bridge, or opened in ACR IN PHOTOSHOP.

A file in ACR IN BRIDGE, I use for when I just want to get quick look and maybe transfer the ACR settings to other RAW files.

I open a RAW file in PHOTOSHOP when I know the file is going on into Photoshop for more extensive editing with layers and masks.

Think of opening a file in ACR IN BRIDGE, kind of like in Lightroom. Whereas opening a file in ACR IN PHOTOSHOP is reserved for more extensive editing than is possible in Lightroom .

Clear, or have I just muddied it all up?!:D

If you cannot open a RAW file with the key commands I described above, make sure that you have the current up to date version of Adobe Raw Converter, which for CS3 is ACR 4.6. For PSCS4, I believe it is ACR 5.2

divamum

Thanks, P. I just came in to update my previous post and say I figured out the problem, which was that I had ACR 4.0. Have just updated it to 4.6 and all is well.

Thanks!

pathfinder wrote:

In Bridge, when you see a RAW file you want to edit, typing ctrl+R will open the RAW file in ACR IN BRIDGE. When you are done editing in ACR, click "done", and you are finished. Fast and easy. Or you can then open the file in PS.

IN BRIDGE, when you select your RAW file, typing ctrl+O, opens the RAW file in ACR IN PHOTOSHOP. It took me a while to understand why I should care if the file is opened in ACR IN Bridge, or opened in ACR IN PHOTOSHOP.

A file in ACR IN BRIDGE, I use for when I just want to get quick look and maybe transfer the ACR settings to other RAW files.

I open a RAW file in PHOTOSHOP when I know the file is going on into Photoshop for more extensive editing with layers and masks.

Think of opening a file in ACR IN BRIDGE, kind of like in Lightroom. Whereas opening a file in ACR IN PHOTOSHOP is reserved for more extensive editing than is possible in Lightroom .

Clear, or have I just muddied it all up?!:D

If you cannot open a RAW file with the key commands I described above, make sure that you have the current up to date version of Adobe Raw Converter, which for CS3 is ACR 4.6. For PSCS4, I believe it is ACR 5.2