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White Balance

Lesson 6 from: Photoshop: Adobe® Camera RAW

Lesa Snider

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Lesson Info

6. White Balance

Lesson Info

White Balance

So the next thing we're gonna look at is the very first option in the basic panel. But first, But first, we're gonna talk a little bit about white balance. See, only with a Texas girl. Are you ever gonna see an image like this come into play in a class? But it's one of the best examples. I had a nasty yellow color cast, so we're gonna use it. But first I want to open up a photo shot file that I made for you that shows you the differences between the different colors of white balance. Okay, so this is an orchid that I shot recently, and I love workers in my favorite flower. But what I really love about this image and we're gonna be using this one at the very end of the class today is it looks like an alien spacecraft. I absolutely love it when you get really close and two and work, it looks like an alien. And I'll shoot anything that looks like an alien. Anything because I am all about side by show. Doesn't it look like a spaceship? Come on. Okay, so white balance will be touched on it.

A little bit earlier. Simply controls the color of lights. What your what? You tell your camera in camera, You tell it the lighting conditions that you're shooting under and it tries Teoh. It changes the color of why, according Teoh, the color cast that that particular light sources giving off. So as you can see here with this one image, I've added some handy labels on here. So the image at the top left is how I captured in in camera. You're right. Camera raw has all these other white balance settings that you can use the same settings that you can't access in your camera So you can see how the image color changes as I change the color of the light source. So we've got auto over here a 2nd 1 on the top row. That's you telling camera. Just do whatever you think needs to be done. Leave me out of it, please. Uh, daylight gives you a little bit of a warmer tongue, because what's your light source? If you're shooting in the daylight, the sun sun is yellow, so we've got a little bit of a warm cast to it. Cloudy and shade look very similar. I shoot on clouding and shade a lot because it's my personal preference that I like my photos to look a little bit warmer rather than cool. Okay, warmer means more yellow tones. More red cool means more bloom or green. So I like the color that I get off cloud and shade again. There is no right or wrong with all of this. It's what looks good to you. You're capturing the shot, your eyes know what you saw. So pick a setting that looks good to you. That tungsten gives us an awful purple e blue class caste. Then we got fluorescent. We've got a simulation of what the lining might have looked like had my flash fired. And we've got custom we're going to see in a moment when we get into the basic panel in camera raw. That camera includes an eye dropper that we can use to go sample a point in their image. We're going to click a point in our energy that really should be light gray or white, not a blown out white, but a nice white highlights and camera will adjust all the other colors in the image, according to the new color of life. We've also got a couple of sliders in camera raw called temperature intent, which allows you to further fine tune the color of lighting and the color cast that particular lighting. But as soon as you start messing with the sliders or use the eyedropper, your white balance many will change to custom and that simply letting you know that Hey, you have tweaked the settings. You're not using one of the presets. Okay, so that's the difference is that white balance can make in your image in. If I could give you one little tip that would improve the color lighting in your photography, it would be white balance. It's one of the easiest things to change if you're shooting in raw. Even if you're not shooting in raw, do make sure that you're paying very close attention. Not like idea to the white balance setting in your camera, because it may produce a huge change in your photography. So will pop out of this image, and we'll actually go into camera wrong. We'll look at how to change the white balance, so go ahead and close this image by pressing commander controlled W for window closed the window and we'll come back to bridge and we're gonna open these two photos here that have nasty color casts. So here's an example of an image that I shot in my home state of Texas. You'll probably figured that out by now. Who? She's not from Colorado. And as I said earlier in the class, I get extremely excited about a lot of things. But one of the mist photography. So I was happy to be back home in Austin, Texas, shooting the capital, and I was shooting outside LA while shoot, shoot, shoot. And then I went inside, and I'm still excited. A lot of a lot of large shoot, shoot, shoot. Well, I hadn't changed my fight balance, All right? So the inside of the capital, I was shooting straight up to the dome where the where the Texas's and I assure you it is not now, nor has it ever been blue. All right, so I got my white balance wrong. But here we are in camera raw, so easy to fix it. So as soon as you open the photo going to make sure you're on the basic panel and the basic panel looks like the aperture, the iris rather of your camera. So click the basics tab in the white balance, poppet. Meaning is at the very top. And if I give it a click, we're going to see all of those presets that we looked at in the example file just a moment ago. And you can simply go through the list until you find the one that makes the image look good to you. Solve the amount a little bit more. I'm gonna choose Otto. Well, now that's exactly what it looks like in there. So auto might do the trick for you. You can just take a spin all through these presets. And as I'm changing them, you can see the temperature intent sliders adjusting themselves as I change and look at those presets. So just stop when you get the one that looks good to you. And again, there is no right or wrong with this tungsten. That's probably what I was shooting under fluorescence a little bit better. That's fairly accurate, but again, for my own personal images. I like it when they have a little bit more of a warm tone to them and there's what would have happened had I had my flash. But that's hysterical because I cannot tell you how far away that is. And had I used a flash, it would have been absolutely no good whatsoever. So for this particular image, we could choose auto and say, That's fine, But let's go back to as shot and I want to show you how to use the custom eye dropper to tell camera exactly which part of your image really should be quite or like grade. So we're going to come up to the top of the camera Wrong window, and we're going to click this little eyedropper. It's the 3rd 1 in the list. It's keyboard shortcut is I. I currently have no way to memorize that keyboard shortcut. If anybody in the audience or the great Interwebs has a good way to remember I for white balance, please let us know. I can think of it as I for idiot for myself that I got my white balance wrong and camera. So what we do is we're gonna give that tool a click. Do we have a suggestion from the audience? How about I for ah dropper eye for eye dropper. That's good. Yeah. Yeah, All right. So we press eye for eye dropper and we get a see how quickly I pick up things. So here's our eyedropper, and we simply come over. We mounts over to the image and we click a point that should be white or light gray. And since I was there, I happen to know that most all of this was white. So I'm just going to click inside of one of these little round sections. And as soon as I do these temperature intense ciders, we're gonna change, and camera is going to go through and adjust the color in my image. And it did a heck of a good job. But like we said earlier, I can continue to fine tune it if I would like to warm it up a touch more by clicking and dragging the temperature slider. And one of the many things I love about a camera here is that the sliders and sells indicate what's gonna happen if you drag them in one direction or the other. So if I drag this temperature, slider tours the blue end, what am I doing? I'm adding blue tones to my image. I'm cooling it off. If I drag the slider toward the yellow end, I'm warming it up. I'm adding more yellow tones to the temperature color light. Okay, If I want to change the color tint, I can add more greens by dragging it towards the green section on the laughter. I can add more magenta by dragging it to the right. So I love that the sliders give you an indication of what's gonna happen if you drag left to right. So let's look at this on another image. I don't know why people in Texas have always done this, but I can tell you in the summer time, you know, when it gets Africa hot in Texas about 115 you know, in August these armadillos just commit suicide on the side of the room. And you at one guy is always a guy now, and I love guy, so I'm not digging on guys at all, but you let one man drive past a dead arm, a deal on the side of the road. When he's going to work in the morning, you can bet that he is going to do everything he can to find a beer can to find an old beer bottle and stick in that armadillos pause. And then when everybody else comes home from work that day and they drive past that part of the road, they get a nice big chuckle because somebody, of course, has stuck a beer can in the dead armadillos pause ho because it, you know, armadillos just look like that when they die. Unless somebody runs over them. They're just all I've never done. Then, of course, but my daddy did. This'll is not that picture, but anyway, wave my class. I can use whatever pictures I want. So here again, we've got a nasty color caste situation so I could take a spin through these presets in the White Balance poppet menu. And unfortunately, I don't know of a keyboard shortcut that lets you cycle through those suckers. That would be really nice. That's the third thing on our Davey camera eight wish list. So you can see that that was a little bit more accurate lighting. That's what What it actually looks like inside that store, that I shop that image and I don't know what this is over over here to the lift. I don't want to know. Looks very chicken ish s so you can see here how the color of the lighting is changing. I was probably under a fluorescent lining condition because I was in the store in San Antonio, so that's probably a lot more accurate. But again, we could go back to as shot. And if we wanted to set it ourselves, we could grab the eyedropper tool by pressing I and we could click on a part of our image that really should be white or light gray and in doing show camera raw is gonna go. Oh, that's what's supposed to be white. I get it, so I'll go through and change the other colors in the image accordingly. So that's how you change. The white balance may go ahead and click. Cancel. Now it's open and J pig and see what kind of options we've got for white balance in a J. Peg, I've got a J pig sitting in the A folder called Number One. This is an image that I got in Prague this past December was teaching on a river cruise up there. That was a lot of fun on the Danube. So we're gonna press command are toe open that in camera. There we go. And if you come over here to the white balance meaning in the basic panel, you can see how much flexibility you don't have with J pegs. Okay, your only choice is the only pre set you can use his auto. Okay, so if we choose auto, we get a tiny shift in lining, but not much. But that said, you can still use the eyedropper. So I'll go back to Ashot, click I to grab the eyedropper and click on something that really should be quieter, like Graham to come down here and click on this railing. And if you are nonplussed with your first professional eyedropper clicking, then you could just keep clicking around in the image and the image will keep updating. So once the color looks right to you, stop clicking. Okay? So simple is that and again, you can also tweak the temperature in 10 sliders to get the color that you want, but far less flexibility with J pegs. Then raw as you can see from the differences in the white balance men, you have a question, Jim. Not really a question. I have a tip for you. Okay, That's why I love having you in studio. And I didn't make this up myself. This is from Matt Laskowski. Oh, OK. Matt Laskowski rocks the house key? Absolutely. Hey, did the same thing with J pick that you're doing. And he was also saying, Look, you've only got custom or you've got auto or as shot, but if you and you're gonna get to this a lot later. But I'm just telling me now is that if you open up a camera raw document Okay, Kamerad picture and you go into each one of those and then you set them up as a preset last one down. But you know, second to the last one down as a, then you'll be able to go and use all of those just by going to that preset and picking them up. Fantastic. So, like in mind, I have them all set up as daylight Flash, etcetera. Because I set them up is a preset there. As long as it matches up with your camera, it's fantastic. Isn't on every J peg that you open if you have to do it. At least you've got them in there. And if nobody else understands this, wait till Lisa gets to presets later on. And then you'll kind of get it because you can save your own. It's very cool. That's a fantastic thank you. Any questions on changing the white balance? Yes, and we'll do that. Then it's about time for break. Perfect timing, great timing. Okay, um, wh photo asks, can you use the white? Can you use the eyedropper on the image over a black spot to get white mounds? I don't think she lets just give that a shot. I'll go and click on one of these airline bottles here is changing, so you could certainly experiment. But Adobe would tell you that it would very much like for you to click on an area that's wider, like three. But sure, you can try clicking on anything that the whole goal here is to get the color of the lighting toe look right to you. So have a clicking party. And from a Steven Sylvester, do you say if there is any way to adjust the number of pixels that the eyedropper reads on the sampling for white balance. That would mean that we need to find something called a sample menu, and I don't know if came a raw has that in there as something that we can look upon. Break find out. But it's not anything that appears in front of shop. When you quit the eyedropper tool and see a six, you have a new sample menu. Your average meaning, I think, and you can tell it how many pixels to look out outside of the pixel T click on and then taken an average of those. So in photo shop, you've got things like three by 35 by five pixels and so on and so forth. But I haven't seen the menu like that in camera raw. That's a great question. Zen Fort is wondering. Would you recommend shooting a great card or color swatch like color match at some point during a shoot to get that accurate White mountains? Oh, heck yeah, Absolutely. So what he's talking about is there are cards that you can buy, or you can even make them yourself. That let's say I was gonna take this shot of Prague, have taken one shot and I would have had my lovely husband Jay, hold the card into the shot. Okay? And then I would have taken another photo without that card. And the card would have a good white, a black and a gray. Okay, so that when you bring the image into camera raw or even Photoshopped, then you've got what you know is a good, quiet black or grey to click on in order to change the rest of your colors. So what you do is you can buy one of those cards. You have somebody else, hold it in the shot, take one picture, and then you take it out of the shot and then you correct that one photo and you apply those same correction settings. Teoh the photos that you didn't have the card in the shot with. So absolutely. If you want to carry that stuff around, I've got an 80 biddy one. I can't remember the manufacturer of a dead gamut, but anyway, it comes in a plastic ation. You open it up and it's got a whole slew of different colors that color swatches that air helpful in color, correcting along with the neutral. You know, white gray and black, and but, you know, you got to be willing to carry it around. So if you are a professional photographer than absolutely, that would be very helpful. But if you're a hobbyist, which is more like what I am most often times that is, don't have it with me or I get to deck. I'm excited and I forget to pull it out. Great, Thank you. Right. Maybe maybe one more question. And that's from Red Mango. Does the view of the history Graham you get when change of white balance matter for deciding what's best. In my personal opinion, I would say no, because really, you're changing the color of lighting and you're trying to make it look good to you, so I don't personally pay that much attention to the history and land. I'm fixing white balance. I pay attention to the history am when we get into these sliders down here to correct tone ality. I would pay attention to them, but white balance not so much, but again, that's just my personal opinion.

Class Materials

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Adobe Camera Raw Files.zip

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Lesa Adobe RAW Slides.pdf

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