RSS
 

Posts Tagged ‘Balance’

How to Correct White Balance in Photoshop: A Guide

04 Aug

The post How to Correct White Balance in Photoshop: A Guide appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by John McIntire.

how to correct white balance in Photoshop

When you think of white balance corrections, Photoshop probably isn’t the first program that comes to mind. In most cases, white balance is dealt with early in the workflow. And because the tools in Lightroom and other RAW processing suites do a great job, Photoshop isn’t necessary.

That said, there are occasions when you might need to alter your white balance in Photoshop – which is where this article will come in handy.

Specifically, I’m going to share four non-destructive methods of correcting the white balance.

And by the time you’re done, you’ll be able to adjust white balance in Photoshop like a pro.

Let’s dive right in.

Disclaimer: As you are no longer working on a RAW file in Photoshop, when you use these tools, you are technically not altering the white balance data in your images. Instead, you are altering the colors and tones of a PSD, JPEG, etc. Even so, the end result will appear the same as a white balance adjustment, and I will refer to it as such for the purposes of this article.

white balance adjustment example

Why correct the white balance in Photoshop

There are many reasons you may want to alter the white balance in Photoshop, rather than in a standard RAW processor (such as Lightroom).

Perhaps you’re halfway through your workflow and you change your mind about some of the choices you made at the RAW stage.

layers in Photoshop
One reason you might want to alter your white balance in Photoshop is if you need to make changes in the middle of a workflow. Instead of heading back to your RAW processor and starting from scratch, you can make the adjustments in Photoshop.

Perhaps another adjustment altered the image colors in a way that you don’t like, and you want to make white balance corrections.

Perhaps you don’t shoot in RAW at all, so you only edit your files in Photoshop.

Whatever the reason, Photoshop offers a huge variety of tools that will let you deal with this task easily and without needing to scrap any of your previous edits.

Four (non-destructive) ways to adjust the white balance in Photoshop

non-destructive adjustments in Photoshop
All of the techniques mentioned in this article are non-destructive – three by way of adjustment layers and one by making use of Smart Objects.

Below, I outline four simple techniques to correct the white balance in Photoshop.

Note that every technique is non-destructive – or it can be, as long as you use layers and Smart Objects.

Starting with your very first option:

1. Camera Raw filter

Let’s get this one out of the way right off the bat.

After all, when it comes to altering your white balance in Photoshop, the Camera Raw filter might be the most obvious option. Why? The filter opens an interface that allows you to use Adobe Camera Raw inside of Photoshop.

If you use ACR or even Lightroom, you’re already familiar with the filter interface, and it should be a piece of cake to work with.

the Camera Raw filter in Photoshop
If you’re already familiar with Lightroom, finding your way around the Camera Raw Filter is going to be easy.

To get started with the Camera Raw filter, create a new layer, then use Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E (Cmd+Alt+Shift+E on a Mac) to copy all of your previous layers and place them into your just-created layer. If you want this adjustment to be non-destructive, right-click the new layer and select Convert to Smart Object.

Now, from the filter menu, select Filter>Camera Raw Filter.

selecting the Camera Raw filter from the menu

This will open the Camera Raw filter window:

the Camera Raw filter window in Photoshop

From here, all you have to do is locate the sliders labeled Temperature and Tint:

adjusting the Temperature and Tint
Assuming the white balance was close to accurate, any changes you make at this point will be quite minor.

Adjust these sliders as you see fit – this is your opportunity to make white balance corrections – then press OK. Job done!

a white balance adjustment in Photoshop before and after
Easy and intuitive, the Camera Raw Filter might be all you need for a quick white balance adjustment in Photoshop.

Note: The Temperature slider in Camera Raw does not correspond to the white balance Kelvin scale. Remember, as you are not using a RAW file, there is no white balance data for you to manipulate at this stage of your workflow.

2. Color Balance

The Color Balance adjustment is the least intuitive option in this article, and its sensitivity takes some time to get used to. Once you get your head around it, however, it can be a quick and powerful way to make changes to white balance in Photoshop. 

To get started, create a new Color Balance adjustment layer:

Photoshop Color Balance adjustment layer

You’ll see a selection of sliders, like so:

Color Balance in Photoshop
Although the Color Balance sliders seem intuitive, they can cause massive changes to your images with minor tweaks.

There is also a dialogue box labeled Tone; by clicking the box, you can switch between altering the shadow, midtone, and highlight colors.

Now, to warm up your image, select a tonal range and move your sliders toward the reds, magentas, and yellows. To cool down your image, push the sliders toward the cyans, greens, and blues. Adjust the shadows, midtones, and highlights until you’re happy with the results.

Color Balance sliders in action
Here, you can see how small changes make a huge difference. I barely moved the sliders, and yet look at the effect on the image below.
before and after Photoshop Color Balance
Color balance: before and after.

Tip: The sliders in the Color Balance adjustment are very sensitive. To get your desired effect, you may only need to move them a tiny amount. Also, because of this sensitivity, altering the midtones can lead to drastic results very quickly. Keep a close eye on your image and don’t be afraid to dial it back if you go too far. Also, don’t forget: if the effect does seem too strong, you can always lower the opacity of the adjustment layer when you’ve finished.

3. Photo Filter

The Photo Filter adjustment is a bit of a wild card and you may never choose it over the other options outlined here, but it’s a good example of Photoshop’s incredible versatility. Plus, who knows? Maybe you’ll like the effect.

The Photo Filter tool aims to replicate the effect of various filters used in film photography to manipulate white balance in camera. Common examples of these filters are warm-up and cool-down filters (which add warm and cool tones to your images, respectively). 

To get started, create a new Photo Filter adjustment layer:

Photo Filter adjustment layer in Photoshop

Then, in the Filter dialog box, you will find several options, including warming and cooling filters:

Photo Filter in Photoshop
Altering the Photo Filter settings can change your results drastically. Apart from the Filter presets and the density, you can also choose a custom color to apply as a filter.

In this example, I chose a warming filter to (you guessed it!) warm up the image. Note that the photo was taken during the blue hour, and that’s deliberate – I want to show you just how powerful the Photo Filter adjustment can be.

The initial effect will almost always require some adjustment; move the Density slider left to reduce the filter’s impact, and move the Density slider right to strengthen the filter.

adjusting the white balance on a mountain landscape
Here you can see a dramatic result from the Photo Filter; this blue hour shot instantly became far more neutral.

That’s pretty much all there is to it.

4. Curves

The Curves adjustment layer is one of the most powerful tools that Photoshop offers. You can use a Curves layer to adjust exposure, contrast, dodge and burn, color grade, and adjust your white balance in Photoshop.

In short, if you are not yet familiar with the Curves adjustment, I recommend taking the time to learn it in depth.

Using Curves to alter white balance is fairly straightforward. To start, create a new Curves adjustment layer:

Curves adjustment layer in Photoshop

Click the box labeled RGB to see options for Red, Green, and Blue:

adjusting Curves in Photoshop

To warm up your images, select the Red curve. Drag it slightly upward to increase the red tones in your images. Do the same to the Green curve. Then drag the Blue curve downward to de-emphasize any cool tones:

Curves RGB adjustments
Although these adjustments seem slight, they’ve had a huge impact on the image. This should show you just how powerful the Curves adjustment can be.

This process can be finicky, so keep adjusting each curve by small amounts until you get your desired effect.

If you want to cool down your image, the process is the same, but you will simply move each of the three curves in the opposite directions.

before and after Curves adjustment
The original image (left) was cooled down a bit with some minor tweaks in a Curves layer.

Correcting white balance in Photoshop: conclusion

Now that you’ve finished this article, you should be able to see that altering the white balance in Photoshop needn’t be a complicated process.

You now know four simple ways to make white balance adjustments, and while Photoshop probably shouldn’t be your first choice when working with white balance, it’s good to have a few tricks up your sleeve just in case.

Now over to you:

Which of these methods of adjusting white balance in Photoshop do you plan to try first? Do you have a favorite? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

White balance in Photoshop FAQs

Can you use Photoshop to change the white balance for an image that isn’t a RAW file?

Yes and no. Technically speaking, only RAW files grant you the ability to change white balance settings. However, you can use Photoshop tools such as the Camera Raw filter, Curves, Photo Filter, and Color Balance to alter the colors of your images – and the effect is similar to a white balance adjustment.

What’s the easiest tool for altering the white balance in Photoshop?

The Camera Raw filter. This tool offers an interface similar to Lightroom and features easy-to-use sliders.

How do I use Curves to correct colors in my images?

Work on the Red, Green, and Blue curves individually. Drag each curve until your colors look exactly as you want them.

Why would I want to use Photoshop to correct my white balance?

Maybe you’ve already started post-processing an image and only later decide you want to alter the white balance. Instead of starting over, you can use tools in Photoshop to get the job done in the middle of your workflow.

The post How to Correct White Balance in Photoshop: A Guide appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by John McIntire.


Digital Photography School

 
Comments Off on How to Correct White Balance in Photoshop: A Guide

Posted in Photography

 

Technique vs Artistic Creativity in Photography – How Important is it to Find a Balance?

12 Jan

The post Technique vs Artistic Creativity in Photography – How Important is it to Find a Balance? appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.

technique-vs-artist-creativity-in-photography

Discussion about technique vs artistic creativity in photographic circles can cause tensions. Much of what’s focused on when learning photography is camera technique. Creative aspects are often left out, even after you’ve picked up some camera skills.

Developing a balanced approach to photography is important. If you’re content to just document what’s in front of you, don’t worry about it. You need to know how to operate your camera competently to be creative with it. Camera technique vs artistic creativity is a matter of engaging both brain hemispheres.

Image: © Kevin Landwer-Johan

© Kevin Landwer-Johan

Left brain vs right brain functions

It’s said that the left hemisphere of our brain is more academic and logical. The right hemisphere is more imaginative and artistic. Technique vs artistic creativity seems to separate somewhat in our thinking.

Learning to work with a camera well requires a good understanding of its basic functions. Controlling the amount of light entering your camera is essential to master. Of course, you can leave this left brain function to the camera’s artificial intelligence (AI). This happens when you use any of its auto or semi-auto modes.

Relying on the camera’s AI takes away some of the technical challenges in camera use. It also inhibits the full expression of the right brain hemisphere’s artistic creativity. When your camera chooses the exposure setting, you relinquish much of your creative expression.

Image: © Kevin Landwer-Johan

© Kevin Landwer-Johan

Photography means ‘drawing or painting with light’

Camera’s don’t take fabulous photographs, fabulous photographers do. Just as an artist’s brush doesn’t make a beautiful painting on its own, a camera is only as creative as the person using it.

The word ‘photography’ comes from the Greek language. It means ‘drawing or painting with light’.

The amount of light entering your camera affects the way your ‘digital canvas’ will appear. Understanding how the camera captures light requires left brain function. Leaving the camera to determine the ‘right’ amount of light negates much of the function of the right brain in creative photography.

If you can’t manage your exposure well it doesn’t matter how good your composition or timing is, your photos will lack creativity. Painting with light requires a good deal of creative decision making.

Image: © Kevin Landwer-Johan

© Kevin Landwer-Johan

Master your camera

When you have mastered your camera, you’re in a stronger position to balance technique vs artistic creativity. Learning how to control the essential functions of your camera frees you up. Then you can concentrate more on the creative aspects of taking photos.

Frequent camera use and study will give you the ability to use your camera fluidly. The more you learn and practice with your camera, the less you will have to concentrate on it.

It can be like learning to touch type or drive a manual-shift car. At first, these are difficult and require a lot of concentration. Plenty of mistakes happen. Spelling mistakes happen. The car will bunny hop and stall. But, with a dedication to learning, the errors become minimized. You can begin to focus your attention on other things. You no longer have to look at where you are placing your fingers on the keyboard. Driving becomes smooth and you can enjoy the scenery.

Camera use is no different.

Once you study and practice enough you will free up your mind to concentrate on the creative aspects of photography. The technical actions required to take photos will consume less of your attention.

Image: © Kevin Landwer-Johan

© Kevin Landwer-Johan

Release your creative expression

Once you’re comfortable controlling your camera, you can be more creative with it. When you understand how it captures images, you’ll be able to manage the settings artistically. Knowing how the sensor responds to light will give you the ability to control it with more innovative expression.

Leaving the exposure up to the camera’s AI will most often result in rather bland results. Your photos will look like everyone else’s who uses and auto mode. This is because the AI is not creative. It’s all algorithm-based and calibrated in a technical lab.

Technique vs Artistic Creativity in Photography – How Important is it to Find a Balance?

Your camera does a pretty good job of exposing your photos. It aims to provide an even exposure, not blowing out highlights or diminishing shadow detail. This does not, however, often make the most expressive exposures.

Manually exposing a photograph well adds depth and feeling to the picture. Scene modes on some cameras will include options for portraits, landscapes, action, and the likes. I have never come across a camera that offers automatic modes to create dramatic, happy or somber photographs. Controlling your camera manually allows you to make creative choices.

Being in control of your exposure allows you to make choices based on what your main subject is. Your camera does not know what it is. Some AI systems in cameras will guess what you are photographing and return exposure results on this presumption.

You will know exactly the nature of your composition and, when you have some understanding of light, you’ll expose it the way you want it to look.

Image: © Kevin Landwer-Johan

© Kevin Landwer-Johan

Push beyond what’s considered correct

Technique vs artistic creativity teaching is often dominated by those whose aim is to take technically correct photos. Photos that don’t fit in the technically correct ‘box’ are scorned.

For creative photographers, ‘correct’ photos are usually perceived as dull, no matter what the subject. Whether a particular composition rule applies does not matter to them. If the whole image is not evenly exposed the photo is still acceptable.

I’ve met far too many photographers who think their photos must reach certain technical standards to be any good. This is what they focus on, and often, their photos lack creative expression.

Knowing how to manage your camera settings well is vital to creative photograph. The technique is very important, but the rules are not.

Image: © Kevin Landwer-Johan

© Kevin Landwer-Johan

Conclusion

Aim to use your camera without consciously thinking about it – much the same way you’ll drive a manual shift car after enough practice.

Instead of thinking about your shutter speed and aperture settings, focus on how you are feeling. What do you want to express in the photographs you are taking? Be present within the moment and relate more to your subject than to your camera. Then you will find the balance between technical vs artistic creativity.

Share your thoughts on this in the comments below.

The post Technique vs Artistic Creativity in Photography – How Important is it to Find a Balance? appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.


Digital Photography School

 
Comments Off on Technique vs Artistic Creativity in Photography – How Important is it to Find a Balance?

Posted in Photography

 

How to Achieve the Perfect White Balance in Lightroom

06 Nov

The post How to Achieve the Perfect White Balance in Lightroom appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.

perfect-white-balance-in-lightroom

Achieving the perfect white balance in your pictures can seem like a futile gesture. Don Quixote tilting at windmills is as nothing compared to finding the harmony that exists somewhere between 2,000 and 10,000 Kelvin! Photographers have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad by their desire to get their pictures looking pixel-perfect with the ideal white balance that seems ever just out of reach. Fret not! With a few tips on adjusting white balance in Lightroom, you’ll be turning out beautiful photos in no time.

perfect-white-balance-in-lightroom

Understanding white balance can be a little tricky, but basically, what you are doing is giving your camera or computer a reference point to calculate all the colors in an image. It’s similar to explaining the size of something like a box or a bowl. Unless you have precise measurements, you need to compare it to a common object, so people have a frame of reference.

Image: White balance is like a banana: it’s a reference point.

White balance is like a banana: it’s a reference point.

Digital cameras use white balance as a way of knowing how all the colors in an image should appear. It’s true north on the color compass, so to speak, and helps inform the values for every other color in the image. By using white balance as the foundation for color calculation, your camera will then adjust what everything else is supposed to look like.

Since colors change under different lighting conditions, white balance is often the key to getting your pictures to look just how you want them.

Image: Temp: 5250K, +39 Tint

Temp: 5250K, +39 Tint

The image above has a crisp, bright appearance that seems fitting after a midsummer rain shower. This is mostly due to setting the white balance to mimic the tones of natural daylight.

Image: Temp: 7274K, Tint +26

Temp: 7274K, Tint +26

A change in the Temperature and Tint resulted in an image that seems as though it was shot in the early morning, or perhaps in a warmer climate. This one feels more comforting, while the top photo might be more true-to-life.

All cameras have an Auto white balance setting, which tries to interpret color based on an analysis of the perceived lighting conditions at the time a shot is taken. However, that doesn’t mean it’s the correct white balance. It’s just one particular value that your camera thinks might be appropriate given the algorithms it has been programmed with by the manufacturer.

The nice thing about white balance is that, like almost everything artistic, it’s entirely subjective. You can make your white balance be whatever you want! It’s a tool to make your pictures look not how someone else thinks they are supposed to look, but how you want them to look. Realizing this helped me immensely over the years, and refocused my editing process altogether. No longer do I look for the correct white balance, but instead, I try to find an accurate white balance given how I want my pictures to appear.

How to Achieve the Perfect White Balance in Lightroom

Shoot in RAW

You can use myriad tools to set your white balance at the time you shoot your pictures. Most cameras have presets like Sunny, Cloudy, Fluorescent, etc., to make sure your white balance is properly calibrated for your given shooting conditions.

However, the option that gives you the most creative freedom isn’t any of these at all. It’s the Photo Quality setting, and the first step to achieving white balance nirvana is to shoot in RAW. This lets you fine-tune the white balance ex post facto so you can edit and tweak in Lightroom rather than worrying about getting it right when you click the shutter.

perfect-white-balance-in-lightroom

Adjust the sliders in Lightroom left or right to change the color temperature and tint. Click the eyedropper to select a neutral color for setting the white balance. Use the Select Menu in the top-right to access various white balance presets.

Post-processing is where the real fun begins because when you shoot in RAW, you can edit your picture however you want. If you want your pictures to look warmer, you can adjust the white balance sliders accordingly. If you prefer a cooler look, you can do that too. The point is there is no correct value for white balance on any given picture – the end result is what matters. What that looks like can be entirely up to you.

Setting white balance in Lightroom

Changing white balance in Lightroom is fairly simple, but there are various options you can use to make the process easier and more customizable.

I like to start with the Eyedropper Tool, which lets you specify white balance by clicking on an area of your photo that is almost white. You’ll get the best results if you click on a slightly gray area. As you hover the eyedropper around your picture, you will see a preview of the results in the top-left corner.

Image: When selecting a target neutral color, look for a portion of your image that is slightly gray...

When selecting a target neutral color, look for a portion of your image that is slightly gray and not pure white. This is just a starting point though and should not be thought of as the final word on white balance.

Finally, you can specify your own white balance just by dragging the Temperature and Tint sliders left and right. You can streamline your editing process by copying and pasting the values into other pictures or use the sync feature to instantly apply them to an entire batch.

Finally, the way to set white balance is by using the preset options in the drop-down menu. These options are just preset values for the Temperature and Tint sliders similar to the white balance in any digital camera.

perfect-white-balance-in-lightroom

Creative customization

The mechanics of changing white balance are one thing, but the effect of changing white balance is another matter entirely. Say it with me: there is no such thing as correct white balance. Instead, your goal should be to create an accurate white balance – one that reflects your artistic intentions in terms of color, mood, and emotion.

Consider the following picture as an example. I shot this file in RAW and this is the result using Auto White Balance.

perfect-white-balance-in-lightroom

Temp: 4650K, Tint: +30

It looks fine, and there’s nothing wrong with the picture, but look what happens with a few clicks of the Temp and Tint sliders. I raised the Temperature and lowered the Tint, and the result is an entirely different image.

Image: Temp: 6758K, Tint: -9

Temp: 6758K, Tint: -9

This version feels much warmer and more intimate than the original, almost like rain has fallen on a parched plant. To change the image again, we can adjust the sliders for different values.

perfect-white-balance-in-lightroom

Temp: 3448K, Tint: +38

In the final version, the viewer is left wondering if those are drops of water or ice. The picture feels cold and distant and evokes an entirely different emotion than the second version.

Which image is the right one?

They all are, and for different reasons.

The point is to know what effect white balance has on your pictures and understand how to change it to get your images to look how you want them to look.

I use this technique all the time when shooting portraits. I used to fret and worry about finding the best white balance for each of my pictures when, in truth, I was putting the white balance cart before the emotional horse. Instead, I now ask myself what I want my clients to feel when they look at their pictures and then adjust white balance (along with other settings) accordingly.

The image below has been processed using Auto white balance.

Image: Temp: 6000K, Tint: +1

Temp: 6000K, Tint: +1

Much like the previous example with water drops on leaves, the results here aren’t bad. It’s a perfectly serviceable image that the client would probably be happy to have in their home. However, a few clicks on the white balance sliders can have a dramatic impact.

Image: Temp: 8285, Tint: +5

Temp: 8285, Tint: +5

This picture has a warmer tone and feels more comfortable. One might argue that the top picture is more true-to-life, while another person could prefer the saturated tones of the lower. The options for adjusting white balance, as with anything in photography, are endless. However, the point is to create an image that is pleasing to you.

Take a break

You might look at any of the examples in this article and immediately prefer one particular white balance setting over another. This happens to me during much of my editing sessions, as well. I find myself drawn to one version of a picture while entirely disregarding another. I find, walking away from my computer to reset my eyes is the best option.

After a brief respite from editing, I often find my initial editing preferences dashed to pieces. It helps me see my photos with a set of fresh eyes, especially after removing myself from technology even for just a few minutes. I often find that photos take on an entirely different appearance when coming back to them from a break. I will usually try new things with white balance that I didn’t think of initially.

Image: Temp: 5500K, Tint: +11

Temp: 5500K, Tint: +11

In the photo above, I went back and forth from warm to cool and back again before settling on a middle-ground approach that I preferred. If I had gone with my original instinct, I don’t think I would have liked the final result. Shooting in RAW, as well as trying different white balance options and finally taking a break from editing altogether, helped me arrive at what I felt was the best result.

How to Achieve the Perfect White Balance in Lightroom: Conclusion

Ultimately, the subjective nature of something as fundamental as white balance can seem a little scary. If there is no correct value, how can you even know where to start? There’s nothing wrong with using Auto, but I encourage you to experiment and try new settings you might not have thought of.

Just because your phone or your computer tells you that your picture should have a certain white balance doesn’t mean that’s the correct value. There is no correct value with creative editing! Tweaking and customizing the white balance is a great way to have creative control over your images to make them look the way you want.

Do you experiment with your white balance in Lightroom? Share with us your thoughts in the comments!

The post How to Achieve the Perfect White Balance in Lightroom appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.


Digital Photography School

 
Comments Off on How to Achieve the Perfect White Balance in Lightroom

Posted in Photography

 

Darktable 2.6.0 update brings new retouch, color balance modules and much more

25 Dec

Darktable, an open source Lightroom alternative, has released a major update with a number of new modules, features and updates.

Darktable version 2.6.0 is the result of more than 6 months of work, consisting of more than 1600 commits, 260 pull requests and 250 issues that have been resolved. The resulting updates include a new retouch module, a filmic module, a redesign of the color balance module and more.

The updated retouch module is essentially an updated version of the spot removal tool that includes a whole new collection of tools to get unwanted artifacts out of images. Cloning has been drastically improved and a built-in split frequency module makes it easy to remove blemishes without losing texture.

A subsection of the retouch module new to darktable 2.6.0

The new filmic module in darktable ‘was designed to reproduce the good properties of analog film, while giving you the easy controls of digital photography,’ according to the darktable 2.6.0 announcement post. The filmic module is effectively a spin-off of the curves tool with more adjustments to precisely dial in the exposure. Blacks, whites, contrast, local contrast and more can all be adjusted within the new filmic module.

A subsection of the new filmic module in darktable 2.6.0

Also added in darktable version 2.6.0 is a new duplicate manager. This new tool makes it easy to create multiple versions of Raw files and keep them in a stack for simple organization. Other features include new zoom options, mask previews and an updated color picker tool.

For a full rundown of all the new features, modules and tools, head over to darktable’s announcement post. It’s a long read, but full of the wonderfully geeky insights we’ve come to expect from the darktable team.

Darktable is available to download for free for a macOS, Windows, and a number of Linux distros. Find out more information on how to download darktable here.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
Comments Off on Darktable 2.6.0 update brings new retouch, color balance modules and much more

Posted in Uncategorized

 

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs

27 Oct

Want to know how to balance exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to improve your photographs without causing white or black clippings?

Have you ever faced a scene so contrasted that it’s impossible to achieve balance in the exposure?

If you shoot in Auto mode, you may have seen this quite a bit. If you were not able to solve this problem while shooting, this is the tutorial for you. I’ll show you how to balance exposure in Adobe Camera Raw using helpful post-processing techniques.

For this exercise, I’m using a photo with extreme problems to really highlight the adjustments I’m making. Images with less-obvious exposure problems can still be improved using this same technique.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Before and After Comparison

Firstly, let’s clarify that this works best with a RAW file, but even if you shoot in JPG format this tutorial can help – so keep reading!

A RAW file is a ‘digital negative’ that contains all the information without being processed, so it won’t open directly in Photoshop. Instead, it opens in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), which is where the editing is done for this tutorial.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Open File

If you are working with a JPG file, open the ACR manually. To do this, go to Photoshop ->Menu -> File -> Open. From the browser window choose your JPG file and select ‘Camera Raw’ from the ‘Format’ drop-down menu. Click ‘OK’ to open in ACR.

If you are not sure whether to shoot with RAW files or JPG Files, read this interesting article.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Open JPG File

*From this point, you can follow the same steps for both RAW and JPG files.

Activate your clipping warnings

To help balance your image, activate the clipping warning in ACR.

To do this, go to the top corners of the histogram where you have a white and black clipping alert. Click on the one you want to view first.

Once activated, this highlights any pixels that exceed the intensity represented.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Activate Warnings

The Shadow Slider

The order in which you decide to tackle different problems doesn’t matter. You have to go back and forward through the adjustments until you reach the balance that works for you anyway.

In this case, I’m going to start brightening up the bottom, so my first instinct would be to lighten the shadows.

Adjust the ‘shadows’ slider until you achieve the desired look.

Look at the changes to the histogram as well.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Shadows

The Black Slider

Now we can see much more detail in the lower part of the photo, but now the contrast has lowered so much that the image has become quite flat. You can correct this by moving the ‘Black’ slider, which determines the darkest black of your image.

Adjust the ‘Black’ slider and see how the darkest areas are now being highlighted in blue to show you the clipping areas because you’re exceeding the range.

Be careful not to exaggerate.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Blacks

The White Slider

Now it’s time to fix the lightest parts. The sky is completely blown out and has little detail; therefore I’ll lower the brightest white possible by moving the ‘White’ slider.

Adjust the ‘White’ slider until you achieve the desired look.

Notice how the red spot in the sky that represented the clippings is getting smaller.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Whites

The Highlights Slider

The image looks better but it hasn’t completely solved the problem.

The next step is the ‘Highlights’ slider to add more detail to it. Be careful not to render the image too dark now.

Adjust the ‘Highlights’ slider until you achieve the look you want.

You’ll need to go back to the Shadows and Blacks to balance them according to the new sky. You can go back and forth through these until you find a balance you are happy with.

Notice how all the clippings have gone:

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Histogram

Before and After Previews

Apart from the clippings you canals keep an eye on the histogram, look how the original had very high points in both ends and was very flat in the middle while the current one is much more balanced.

To view before and after previews, press the P on your keyboard, allowing you to make comparisons without losing any of your adjustments.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Before Preview

Balance is not necessarily all there is to it.

In this case, it resulted in a flat and muted image.

To give it that extra punch you can boost areas such as contrast or saturation.

Keep in mind that these can create clippings again, so always keep checking the entire image.

Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs - Preview

If you worked through this process with a RAW file, it is non-destructive, so you can keep editing until you’re satisfied without losing any pixels or lowering the image quality.

Due to the JPG file being a destructive process, I advise you to save it as a copy to always keep your original intact.

If you want to learn more about the basics of ACR, I invite you to read my tutorial ‘Quick Beginner’s Guide to Processing RAW Files in Photoshop Adobe Camera Raw‘.

The post Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs appeared first on Digital Photography School.


Digital Photography School

 
Comments Off on Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs

Posted in Photography

 

How Color Balance Can Kill Your Color

21 Aug

Sometimes taking a neutral position on things like color balance isn’t really the safe or smart thing to do – sometimes it’s downright dangerous!

Gray Balance Versus White Balance

The camera term for color balance is White Balance, although we measure gray cards rather than white surfaces. Why? The difference isn’t about semantics, it’s about math.

Color Checker Gray - How Color Balance Can Kill Your Color

This is the bottom row of patches from the full ColorChecker chart published (now) by X-Rite.

Neutral gray colors (yes, gray is a color) are all composed of equal measurable parts of each RGB color, while pure white contains no measurable color at all. Photographic gray cards are absolutely color-neutral. We don’t use white cards simply because you can’t measure data that doesn’t exist.

What we perceive as white in a photograph more often than not contains trace amounts of red, green, or blue. Just enough to throw the color balance of the photo way off center if used as a reference (try it and you’ll see).

The Gray Balance tools in Photoshop and Lightroom will neutralize whatever color you click on, so always pick a gray patch rather than a white one. The ColorChecker includes a row of neutral gray patches, none of them being pure white.

Eye Versus Camera

The human eye is very forgiving in this respect. It perceives white in a very assumptive manner. White paper viewed under color light still appears white because of what we call memory colors, a cognitive database of repeated experience. If we associate a color with an object often enough, we establish a link between the two.

Not so with the camera. Its sensors have no such recollection and are not so forgiving. This is why you must balance color in Photoshop and Lightroom by referencing known neutral gray elements in the photo to known values.

Auto White Balance

Your camera’s Auto White Balance, or AWB, is what is relied on by most shooters because the flawed assumption that cameras recognize light like we humans do. Actually, the cameras are dumb electronic devices that evaluate light more clinically than do our eyes. Our brain’s cerebral cortex parses the hues of light according to our memory color catalog.

Memory Colors

White Balance Memory Colors - How Color Balance Can Kill Your Color

Memory colors are logged into our brains. These include grass (green), sky (blue), paper (white), orange (orange), etc.

Whether under candlelight or sunlight, fluorescent or tungsten, sunset or noonday, a white sheet of paper will always appear white because your brain retains the associative reference. Your brain compensates for almost every color of light, delivering a believable impression of what you’ve come to think of as reality.

No matter when you see these memory color items, your brain registers these colors and in a sense, overrides the actual color of the light. Unfortunately, this is not true for (digital or film) cameras.

White Balance Symbols - How Color Balance Can Kill Your Color

How it works

Trusting that the camera’s AWB will correctly diagnose light and set the proper color interpretation is a flawed and risky assumption fraught with problems.

First, in the language of RGB color, equal values of red, green, and blue (like red 128, green 128, and blue 128) light produce an absolutely neutral gray color. This is an absolute of color science.

In order for the camera’s AWB algorithm to deliver accurate color, it must assume that there exists a detectable and absolutely neutral gray component in the scene. A pretty wild assumption considering that there are over 16,000,000 colors in the visible spectrum.

The camera then examines the light reflecting from objects in the scene and locks onto the cluster of pixels whose RGB values are closest to equal (regardless of how dissimilar). The AWB mandate then forces those colors to become absolutely neutral value while twisting all other colors in the scene in a similar manner.

This is all well and good IF that cluster of pixels in the captured scene actually is, in reality, neutral (gray) in color. The corrected values will then actually balance the colors in the image and produce an image that looks “real”.

The issue

But, if the scene does not have an absolutely neutral component – if there is a bluish somewhat-gray item in the scene but is not truly neutral gray (like the snow scene below) – then the image processor in your camera will dutifully and obediently change that bluish color to neutral gray, and shift all the other colors in the scene in the same direction on the color wheel.

While your eyes and your cerebral cortex use memory colors to forgive any color cast in a scene, they do not afford that same corrective assumption to photographic images. If the collection of pixels or printed dots produce off-color results, your perception will register and report “bad color”.

You are smarter than your camera

Your camera is not smart, it is simply efficient and obedient. It will obey anything you tell it to do. It’s a machine, it is not a volitional entity. It has neither reasoning power nor color-compensating algorithms.

Your camera may claim to have “intelligence,” but that intelligence is merely scripted logic, sometimes labeled artificial intelligence (the keyword here is “artificial”). You are the only one with actual intelligence. You must tell the camera what to do, NOT the other way around.

Take control of the situation and set your camera’s white balance setting according to the current lighting conditions. Your options include manual pre-sets for all typical lighting situations: Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Flash, and usually a couple of custom setups.

White Balance Genoa Cathedral - How Color Balance Can Kill Your Color

These two images were captured within 5 minutes of one another, under identical lighting. AWB (left) neutralized the color but destroyed the richness of the scene. The camera’s Shade color balance (right) added a slight amount of warmth and captured more closely what my eyes observed.

Color Balance Tools

There is a time to use your white balance tools to reference true neutral gray in the scene to set the gray balance in your photos, and there is a time to keep those items in your camera bag. The truth is, neutralizing every image can literally suck the natural color right out of a scene.

White Balance Tools - How Color Balance Can Kill Your Color

White Balance Tools: A) Digital Grey Card, B) DataColor SpyderCube, C) X-Rite ColorChecker Passport, D) Photoshop Levels, E) Camera Raw, F) Lightroom.

A gray balance tool placed in the scene (for an initial test shot) will serve as the gray balance reference for correcting any color casts in images captured in that scene.

This correction takes place after the capture when the test image is opened in Adobe Lightroom, Camera Raw, or Photoshop. When the White Balance tool is applied to a reference gray in the test image, all photos open at the time can be color corrected automatically.

This is truly a great way to accurately set the lighting balance within a series of photos taken during a single session.

White Balance Sunset Fence - How Color Balance Can Kill Your Color

The sunset light reflecting off this wooden fence would be scuttled if the colors were neutral balanced.

Exceptions

Unless the scene contains “emotional” light such as candlelight, sunrise/sunset, late afternoon or early morning light, nightlife/neon, etc. If the scene to be captured contains this kind of emotional (or mood) lighting, the very mood can effectively be neutered by the white balance process. Shooter beware.

White Balance Disney - How Color Balance Can Kill Your Color

Late afternoon Florida sun added a very warm and rich appearance to the shot on the left. I used the Neutral Balance eyedropper (choosing the most neutral colored surface I could find) to set the White Balance. As a result, the process destroyed the warmth that attracted me to capture the image in the first place.

White Balance Alaska - How Color Balance Can Kill Your Color

This snowy night shot was taken in Fairbanks Alaska on December 28th at 10 PM, capturing the surreal natural lighting that occurs in Alaska at this time of year.

The cool shadows that are evident in the image on the left are typical of moonlight reflecting off the snow. Setting the camera’s color mode to Daylight, allowed the tungsten lamplight to capture warm lighting amidst the cold snow, recording the scene exactly as I experienced it.

In the picture on the right, the camera’s White Balance was set to AWB, assuming that this “automatic” setting would capture the colors of the image faithfully. Oops! In truth, AWB actually lost the shivering cold lighting altogether.

In both of the above cases, white/neutral balance routines were employed, and the ambiance of both scenes was dutifully destroyed. By forcing each unique lighting to be neutralized, both the warmth of the sun and the frigid look of the night snow were lost.

Conclusion

There is no single, always-right color balance setting on the camera. In fairness, most times the AWB setting in the camera and gray balance in the editing software work out very nicely.

But occasionally the “intelligent” camera and the powerful editing software need smarter input. That means you. Using a known neutral color element in the picture as a reference allows you to become the color expert.

White Balance Kids - How Color Balance Can Kill Your Color

Using the aluminum window panel (top right) as a gray reference allowed me to automatically color correct this picture with a single click.

So what have we learned? There is a time for White Balance just as there is a time for political correctness. BUT to force the strict application of either in every situation can destroy the spirit of free expression.

Use gray balance only when emotional/mood lighting isn’t present and when a good gray component is in the scene. Too many dramatic scenes get neutered (or neutralized) in the name of neutrality.

The post How Color Balance Can Kill Your Color appeared first on Digital Photography School.


Digital Photography School

 
Comments Off on How Color Balance Can Kill Your Color

Posted in Photography

 

9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

29 Jun

Sometimes it feels like getting the right composition is an endlessly moving target, with this technique and that idea and many other considerations. Balance is one of the more complicated concepts but is also a really powerful tool that is worth investing some time learning. To help you out, here are 9 ways and elements you can use to help you create balance in your images.

lighthouse - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

What is balance?

Balance is a way of composing an image so that all elements complement each other equally. Visual tension or harmony are created which results in a pleasing image.

Many different elements can be involved with incorporating balance into your image composition:

  1. Color
  2. Light versus shadow
  3. Texture
  4. Visual weight
  5. Subject placement
  6. Relation of elements to each other
  7. Symmetry
  8. Depth of field
  9. Negative space

How do you achieve balance?

When you compose your scene you need to think about the different elements and how they interact and relate to each other. What is the story you want to tell or frame up? What is the emotion you are trying to convey?

Balance can be harmonious, where all elements are equally present and form an aesthetically pleasing whole – symmetry is a good example. A landscape scene perfectly mirrored in a still pond or lake is very harmonious.

An image can have visual tension due to unbalance. It may seem counterintuitive to say that this also creates balance but think about negative space or a small spot of bright red in an otherwise dull image.

Often several different factors come into play in considering balance, it’s not necessarily just one problem to solve for each image. Every image has color, a subject, tone, contrast and so on, which are all involved in producing your final image.

Some of these concepts have to do with the mechanics of how you take the photo (light/shadow/contrast/tone) and some are more compositional (symmetry/negative space/subject placement). So there are many different things to consider at once within each image.

Let’s look at each in more detail:

#1 – COLOR

cherries in a bowl - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

Even though this is a very dark image with a lot of blacks, the rich intense color of the cherries is not lost in the background – the color, quantity and placement balance out against the black shadows

Color has a great impact on your images.  When color film finally emerged it had a huge impact on photography. Being able to see bright colors instead of monochrome was very different. It lead to many different styles and techniques in photography and is still the dominant way images are processed today.

It allows you to evoke emotion, create tension, highlight a specific element, catch our attention and tell the story of the image in different ways.

garden with a red bush - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

Take this garden shot with all the different foliage shades of green and yellow – yet the eye goes immediately to the small but prominent red flowers. This image has balance because the red has a lot of visual weight but physically is only a small part of the overall image.

If it was much bigger it would overwhelm, instead, it gives somewhere to start the journey looking at all the different textures and colors contained in the garden.

b/w of a bike - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

Using color to evoke a mood, a feeling, or a period of time

This old bicycle turned into a Welcome sign at a historic homestead. By opting for a slightly sepia tone it picks up all the textures in the shot and evens out all the different competing colors.  The focus becomes the bicycle and not the bright green of the grass or the red of the chicken in the background. Changing the colors balances out all the other elements and allows the subject you want to be the focus.

#2 – LIGHT VERSUS SHADOW

Light and shadow are the opposite elements necessary for photography. If you have light, in general, you will have shadows. When you have both present it gives your subjects added dimension, they become physical rounded elements, not flat even though they are being viewed in a flat 2D medium (either printed or on a screen).

Contrast and tonal difference make an image more dynamic and interesting. Contrast comes from the difference between the amount of light and shadow in an image.  More contrast also widens out the tonal range of the image, when it is too similar it will look very flat (like the seaside landscape below).

overcast seascape image - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

This image taken on a heavily overcast day has very little contrast, it’s quite flat and tonally similar and as a result, lacks punch and impact. It is not balanced in the light/shadow equation and it shows up visually as a result.

So learning to use both light and shadow together can create balance in your images. The horseshoe image below was specifically shot to use the harsh midday sun to generate the shadows and capture the patterns and how they hang on the nails. It would be a much less interesting image without the shadows.

horse shoes in b/w - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

#3 – TEXTURE

Texture can be present in different ways – in the image of the spoons with spices (below) there are three layers of texture – the background surface, the spices in the spoons, and some scattered spices.  While there is a lot of texture in the image, it balances due to the scale and the blending layer in between which softens the difference between the spices and the industrial background.

If the extra scattered spices were not there it would not work as well as they help transition the eye around the image.

spices in 3 spoons - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

This blueberry shot uses texture in a different way, where the subjects themselves become the textural element, with some added interest in the form of water droplets. Without the droplets, it was a much less interesting image, and the fine detail of the droplets help balance out the size of the berries, giving the eye more elements to engage with.

blueberries - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

Think tree bark, patterns on the water, brick walls, cracks in the pavement, clouds in the sky, foliage in a garden, shiny reflective metal, stones in a pond, sand at the beach. Think long exposure to produce soft foamy waterfalls or interesting cloud patterns. Consider ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) for soft blurred effect or pretty light trails.

Texture is all around you and in everything you see, but it is often taken for granted. Texture can be highlighted and become a key element in your image if you take the time to see it and take advantage of it.

#4 – VISUAL WEIGHT

This is a tricky concept to come to grips with as it sometimes seems a bit contradictory. How can a small element overwhelm a bigger image? How can one color dominate another one?

In the butterfly image below, the tones are all very similar, even the colors are shades of yellow and brown. Yet the visual weight is actually held by the fuzzy green leaf in the bottom corner.  If you crop the bottom section off it completely changes the feel of the image, and the butterfly becomes more prominent.

monarch butterfly - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

One of my personal favourite images is of a fresh new bright limestone headstone in a cemetary of very old and weathered stones (below). The light was at the perfect angle to highlight the one stone which carries the visual weight yet is only a very small element physically within the image.

The central placement works well in balancing the other elements around it and allows more of the story to be told – if the focus was tight on the headstone it would have had a very different feel to the image.

cemetery - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

5. SUBJECT PLACEMENT

Where you place the subject in the frame is important in many ways. It can be used to show scale, the relationship between elements, to highlight tension, or to create a specific feel or stylistic tone to an image.

A classic example is the Rule of Thirds – where it is taught that a center placed subject lacks drama and impact – place the subject on the third lines to make it more dynamic within the frame. When the subject is looking in a particular direction, where you place them affects the feeling of the image. If they are looking out of the frame, placing them close to the edge is quite a different image than if you compose the image so that they are looking more into/across the frame.

In the cave image below the people add balance by providing scale. Without them there we would be unable to appreciate the true size of the cave as we have no context to apply. The bright colors of their clothes also offer some visual weight in contrast to the textured details of the rock walls. The positioning at the bottom of the frame grounds the image and helps tell the story.

large cave opening - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

The placement of this bellbird on the branch is an appealing balance of angles and lines. The line of the main branch is echoed by the blurred ones in the background – this gives some depth and scale to the image.

The bird is a nice size within the image, large enough to see the details, but not cramped within the frame and his crimson eye holds a lot of visual weight as well. If the bird was angled the other way it would be less pleasing as it would not be balanced the same way, as the X is symmetrical.

yellow bird in a tree - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography
#6 – RELATIONSHIP OF ELEMENTS

Similar to #5 above, this takes the placement concept a step further. You need to consider the specific relationship between elements and how can you use that in composing your image.

In this landscape shot below, it’s a pretty simple land/sea/sky shot – not really very interesting at all.  But the inclusion of the sign right next to the edge of the cliff changes everything. The bright red of the letters catches our attention (as it should) and even though the sign is small it has large impact.

Had the sign not been so close to the edge, it may have been a less compelling image. In composing this, the Rule of Thirds was also used to provide scale and context with the cliff edge off to the right, showing that the cliff continued (it was actually a whole headland of several hundred meters with just this one sign).

danger sign cliff warning - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

Below is a wide-angle landscape shot of some fossilized totara tree trunks at Curio Bay, The Catlins, NZ. Landscapes when taken with a wide angle often lose context if they don’t have a foreground element to anchor them.

The person also helps tell more of the story, while providing a color pop of bright blue visual interest and weight against the sand and rock. His presence in the front of the frame balances out the large wider angle landscape behind him and gives scale to appreciate how big it is.

man in a landscape image - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

#7 – SYMMETRY

When done well and with thought, symmetry can be a useful tool. Putting your subject dead center in the frame can be a risk too. While a mirror image in a lake or puddle can be pretty, it can also be quite static and uninteresting. An odd situation where the image is perfectly balanced and yet it doesn’t actually work compositionally!

Below, the autumn tree reflection is a mirror image but the angle at which it has been shot puts the focus on the landscape. So the reflection is not necessarily the point of the image. Instead, it is more of an added bonus. Also, the way the trees are arranged creates balance across the image, the two golden willows are rounded and slightly shadowed.

They are counterbalanced by the taller golden poplar, with similarly toned grass behind, and the green of the reeds in the water. There is enough contrast in the image with the light and shadow elements to add depth and interest while the gold/blue color combination is an aesthetically pleasing one.  The reflection softens the colors and tones enough that they allow the actual landscape to take prominence.

This image was specifically composed with all those things in mind.

fall scene and reflection - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

#8 – DEPTH OF FIELD

Does everything in your image have to be 100% sharp? My answer to that is no. You can use Depth of Field creatively, balancing the subject against the softer background, allowing the subject to be prominent and the strong focal element.

Imagine the shot of the larch cones below if the aperture was more like f/11. If all the foliage and trees in the background were in focus then the cones would be lost against it. Portrait photographers use this concept to their advantage, shooting their subject in a similar way to get them to stand out from a sometimes messy or distracting background.

pine cones on a tree - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

#9 – NEGATIVE SPACE

Negative space is an interesting composition element that works for some shots. Remembering to keep it in the back of your mind for the rare occasion it might suit can be difficult. Also being brave enough to try a different approach than you normally use is challenging.

When used carefully, negative space adds value to an image by providing a lot of empty space to create balance for a particular subject. It is often used successfully in travel photos, where brightly coloured walls or buildings offer a great canvas for a person to be posed against, often as they walk past.

This gerbera shot has a lot of negative space on the left and underneath the flower. Because of the curving stem and the dynamic angle of the flower, this image has a lot of movement for the eye. The negative space offers a calming balance to that energy.

pink gerbera - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

The smooth soft water of this long exposure offers some negative space to balance out the visual weight of the rocks and the busy sky. The light tones of the water also create balance with the darker tones of the sand.

b/w beach scene - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

CONCLUSION

Sometimes an image can feel just subtly off even though the subject might be good, the light is good and the composition seems to be alright. It is worth taking a look at those images with fresh eyes and considering the balance of the different elements discussed here. Perhaps you will begin to see some opportunities to compose your images in a different way?

Composition often seems to be a never-ending quest to find the holy grail of elements.  Do you have perfect lighting? Is your subject awesome? Are they doing something cool or interesting? Are the colors fresh and vibrant? Is it exotic? Does it have a wow factor?

Yet your image might have all of those things and still not seem quite right. So take a look at how the different elements relate to each other from a balance point of view.

Maybe instead of trying to remember all the complicated rules of composition – let’s keep it much simpler and start with balance. Or maybe you want your work to be really edgy and challenging and you aim for the tension in a deliberately unbalanced work – that is also a viable creative choice too.

But if you feel that your images lack a certain something, try looking at them from a balance point of view and see what you get. Like everything in photography, there is no one single right way to do it. Instead, there are many different ways, and hopefully one will resonate with you to help you learn something new.

If you are someone who considers balance when composing your images, what other ways do you think about? This is merely a summary of the many possible options that I keep in mind when shooting. Please share any others I haven’t mentioned in the comment area below.

The post 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School.


Digital Photography School

 
Comments Off on 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

Posted in Photography

 

Balance of power in international relations pdf

04 Sep

Hooper also argues that this gendered lens requires a complete overhaul of traditional methods; athens and restoring a balance of power among Greek cities. Theory and Meta – is this effort to be? here gender refers not to the “biological” differences between men and women but the social constructs of masculine and feminine identity. While […]
BooksChantcdCom

 
Comments Off on Balance of power in international relations pdf

Posted in Equipment

 

Auto White Balance: Yay or Nay?

20 Jul

So what exactly is white balance and why is it so important to digital photography?

The rudimentary answer is that light (the foundation of photography) has variable color temperatures at different times of the day. Your eyes are much better at processing color than a digital camera. Thus a white object will always appear white to you, despite the conditions. White balance is the process that the camera uses to remove color casts produced by these different color temperatures and helps your camera emulate whaty our eyes do naturally when dealing with white.

Auto White Balance: Yay or Nay?

Auto White Balance sometimes give very close results to what you see with your eyes.

Auto White Balance: Yay or Nay?

Daylight White Balance can be used to enhance the existing colors of your scene.

Auto White Balance (AWB)

The Auto White Balance (AWB) setting helps your camera “guess” the best option or choose the one closest to what your eyes might see. Many times AWB works better when you are outdoors dealing with natural lighting, than with more complex lighting situations.

The White in White Balance

To understand when AWB works well and is applicable, it is also important you understand the different White Balance presets your camera offers. They include; Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, Tungsten, and Fluorescent. Added to these are Flash, Kelvin and Custom White Balance. Of note, the Custom White Balance Mode is used when you have especially challenging lighting conditions and need to lock in your whites based on those conditions. It is an under-used option that gives great results, so check your manual and experiment with it sometime.

Auto White Balance: Yay or Nay?

Delicate Arch, Utah – shot with the AWB setting.

Auto White Balance: Yay or Nay?

Delicate Arch, Utah – edited with a Custom White Balance setting.

The Auto White Balance setting assesses your scene and chooses the brightest part of your image as the white point, which unfortunately can vary from one shot to the next. Over the years though, significant improvements have been made to AWB systems and the results are getting better. Even with these developments, it is difficult for Auto White Balance to correct certain kinds of lighting (e.g. artificial or combination lighting setups). Another instance where it’s not recommended to use AWB is when doing panoramic shots, as you run the risk of varying light on your stitched image.

Auto White Balance: Yay or Nay?

Boats shot with a Custom WB. In a panoramic shot, if AWB is used, it can vary from shot to shot

The opposite problem exists as well – when AWB corrects color casts you do not want it to, such as when you are shooting a sunset or any scene where the color of the light is essential to the image. Some of the White Balance presets listed above, are set in-camera to provide some level of correction to typical lighting scenarios. Here you tell the camera the right setting for the occasion and take more control over your final image.

RAW Power

If you shoot in RAW, you are probably aware that RAW files retain all the color data captured by your camera. This retention allows you to change or choose a different White Balance setting while post-processing your RAW files. Some argue that even with this handy feature, AWB does not give you the best colors.

Auto White Balance: Yay or Nay?

Shot with Daylight WB (camera) vs processed Daylight WB (Photoshop)

Another perspective of setting White Balance in camera ensures that in the processing stage, your color rendition is consistent across all your shots (e.g. when shooting a wedding). Also of note, AWB can give you different results within the same scene. So you can go from one set of colors in a wide-angle shot to a different set of colors when you zoom in. Both of these are examples of losing the harmony when you are working on a series of images.

Taking Control

You may use AWB because it is easier to let the camera figure out the white balance based on the scene in front of you. However, as stated before, it is useful when you know how and when to use it. Setting white balance is not as daunting as it sounds though and when the conditions are not variable, you only need to set your white balance once (for those conditions).

Auto White Balance: Yay or Nay?

Using RAW and WB to take control of the appearance of your results.

So, if you are outdoors on a sunny day, set your white balance to Daylight or Sunny. If it is cloudy, choose the Cloudy white balance and similarly if you are in shade, choose Shade. These are very straightforward to remember based on the easy naming convention. When indoors, for incandescent lights, choose Tungsten (or Incandescent) and when shooting an area with fluorescent lights, choose Fluorescent. This is called setting your white balance to match your shooting conditions.

You can also set your white balance to modify your existing conditions. Once you start experimenting with white balance and understand how it affects your images, use it to get creative or make your image look either warmer or cooler.

Auto White Balance: Yay or Nay?

White Balance used to make the image look cooler.

Conclusion

Auto White Balance is a handy setting to have when you are unsure of what white balance would work for your scene. If you shoot in RAW, you can easily change your White Balance after the fact to find the best option.

If you want more control of your results, choose one of the camera white balance presets, already tailored for specific conditions, or create your own (custom white balance). Setting your white balance eliminates that extra post-processing step of fixing it from scene to scene and gives you more consistent results.

What is your go-to white balance and are you a fan of using AWB? Tell me in the comments below.

The post Auto White Balance: Yay or Nay? by Nisha Ramroop appeared first on Digital Photography School.


Digital Photography School

 
Comments Off on Auto White Balance: Yay or Nay?

Posted in Photography

 

How to Use White Balance as a Creative Tool

02 Jun

White Balance is almost always used to match what colors our cameras detect to the colors we see with our eyes. Our brains are very good at managing how we see color. A sunny day looks warm and bright, but the actual color of the light is skewed heavily blue. Indoors, incandescent lights are notoriously warm (yellow/orange) and though our eyes may detect little of this warmth, you can bet our cameras will. White Balance is how we correct for that difference in light color, and how we can make images appear “natural” which is to say, how our brains detect it.

White Balance as a Creative Tool

Auto White Balance

It’s useful, certainly, but most of us leave it up to the camera to make the decision about White Balance. I know I do. My cameras are almost always set to Auto White Balance. Since I shoot in RAW, any errors that the camera makes can quickly be corrected in post-processing. At this point, I rarely even think about White Balance. But, perhaps I should…

White Balance can be more than a mindless setting of camera functions or a digital slider in Lightroom. Instead, it can be used as a creative tool. Slight changes in White Balance can change the tone and impact of your images. From dramatic color shifts to subtle changes in tonality, it’s time to elevate White Balance into the realm of creative options in photography.

The methods I’ll discuss here can be done either in camera or in post-processing, but it’s easier using the latter since you can see the impact of your choices real time. Although I use Adobe Lightroom, any program that allows you to adjust White Balance will work.

Dramatic Shifts in White Balance

Big shifts in White Balance can completely change the nature of your image. Shifts from cool to warm tones can take the image from looking as though it was made during the blue hour to post-dawn, or even make the weather appear to change.

A few years ago I was leading a wilderness/photo tour in the Noatak National Preserve in northwestern Alaska. One evening, an afternoon storm was clearing off the mountains and I went down to the river to make a few images. The light was pink, the rolling clouds and falling rain lit by the low sun.

Below are three versions of the same image with only the White Balance changed. You can see the huge difference made by the shift from warm to cool tones. The bluest image is set 3600K, the warmest to 14750K, and the one somewhere in between is 7000K. In the end, you’ll probably choose an image that is neither overly cool, nor overly warm, but how the White Balance setting changes the feel of the image is worth noting.

White Balance as a Creative Tool

White Balance set to 3600K.

White Balance as a Creative Tool

7000K

White Balance as a Creative Tool

14,750K

Here is another example using autumn foliage, in this case, a Dwarf Birch in Alaska. The top image is 5050K, very close to what the Auto function on my camera selected, in the second I’ve warmed the image to 9000K. Although I prefer the cooler tones, I could see the second version appealing to editors looking for an autumn spread in a magazine or catalog.

White Balance as a Creative Tool

White Balance set to 5050K.

White Balance as a Creative Tool

White Balance set to 9000K.

Subtle Shifts in White Balance

White Balance as a Creative Tool

White Balance set to 4350K.

White Balance as a Creative Tool

White Balance set to 8700K.

Subtle shifts in White Balance can also be effective, even though differences between images may be less obvious. A change of a few hundred to a couple thousand Kelvin (the K measurement used in White Balance) can make a surprising difference to the impact of an image. In the top photo, I chose a cool setting (4350K) which brings out the cool winter tones. The second is much warmer, set to 8700k, which to me, (aside from being a bit too warm) feels like an evening storm is approaching. Neither is exactly “accurate” to the scene as I saw it, but neither are they necessarily unnatural. I’ll return to this image shortly.

Water

Water strikes most people as a cool substance, and often it looks better when a White Balance with more blue-tone is selected. I made this image on a day with broken clouds, in autumn, in a small mountain range north of my home in Alaska. Tiny patches of the sun were penetrating the yellow, shrubby willows which surrounded this small creek. The yellow leaves and the partially overcast sky gave the scene a notably warm tone which you can see in the top image, set to 4600K (as selected by my camera’s Auto White Balance setting). I think it’s too warm, so just a subtle push to the blue range (4100K) was enough to retain the warm tone in the single yellow leaf but sufficient enough to cool the water.

White Balance as a Creative Tool

White Balance 4600K as chosen by the camera using AWB.

White Balance as a Creative Tool

White Balance adjusted to 4600K in post-processing makes the water feel much cooler.

Sunsets

Sunsets too can benefit from a little creative tweaking of the White Balance. From the bluff above a beach in Homer, Alaska, I made the image below. The cooler-toned toned image was shot using Auto White Balance (4600K), while the second I warmed up to 6000K in processing. I like both versions. So you can see that selecting a White Balance is very much a matter of taste, and how you want your image to come across to your audience. Which version do you prefer?

White Balance 4600K as shot using AWB.

White Balance adjusted to 6000K in post-processing.

Selective Changes to White Balance

The great part about digital post-processing is that you don’t have to choose one White Balance or another, you can mix and match. My choice of software, Adobe Lightroom, allows you to use the Adjustment Brush to grab certain parts of your frame, and independently adjust them from the rest of the image.

The photo below was made around the same time as the leaf in the stream I discussed earlier. In this case, a global (over the entire image) adjustment made the sprig of autumn colors look too cool and weird, even though the water was about right. So I cooled the whole image off to 3700K, then selected the sprig and bumped the Temperature setting to +35 using the Adjustment Brush.

As I was playing with the snowy mountain image I discussed early, I realized I liked neither the blue nor the overly warm version. I thought some combination might work well. So I set the overall tone slightly blue to 5100K and selected just the mountain, where the hint of sunlight was shedding some warmer light and gave that a boost to +23. The result works.

White Balance set to 5100K overall with warmth added to the top of the mountains using the Adjustment Brush.

Compare this version which is at 5000K with no extra adjustments on the mountains. See how subtle the difference is? But the version above feels little warmer in the sunlit areas.

White Balance in Black and White

We think of White Balance as strictly related to color, but in fact, it can play an important role in black and white as well. The White Balance used in your final image can impact cont st, and the way different shades of gray are presented in the final image.

To get the full impact, you need to use that White Balance slider in a big way. That means doing big pushes from warm to cool, not little subtle shifts of a few hundred or thousand Kelvin.

Examples

I was on the Alaska Ferry making images on a very gray and rainy winter day when we passed this small speck of an island with a few wind-blown spruce trees growing on it. I knew it was a black and white kind of scene, so I quickly removed the color using Lightroom. When I moved the White Balance to one side or the other it created a big change in the contrast and overall brightness of the photo. The top image is set well to the blue range (3700K) while the second is way over in the warm range (32,700K). You can see how the warm setting removed some contrast and brightened the photo.

3700K

32,700K

A snowy landscape image on a beach near Haines, Alaska provided another chance to explore how White Balance impacts a black and white scene. The left image is set to 3700K, the right to 35,000K.

3700K

35,000K

Lastly, is this simple composition of a dew-covered spider web. The top image has high contrast, is dark overall, with clean white dew drops and is set 2000K, (as cool as Lightroom will allow). The second is much grayer, with substantially less contrast, and is as high as Lightroom will allow at 50,000K. There is no question, I prefer the first version. But many images, such as the two examples above depend more on personal taste.

2000K

50,000K

Conclusion

It is time to stop thinking of White Balance as strictly a way to accurately present color, and instead, embrace it as a creative tool. Whether it is for dramatic impact, subtle changes, selective adjustments, or even (counter-intuitively) using it in black and white photography – White Balance can play an important part in the outcome of your images. Consider it, use it. Embrace White Balance as more than just a setting.

The post How to Use White Balance as a Creative Tool by David Shaw appeared first on Digital Photography School.


Digital Photography School

 
Comments Off on How to Use White Balance as a Creative Tool

Posted in Photography