Color Balance

posted by Daino_16, Apr 10, 2006 6:14 AM — 0 comments

Months and months ago, I was asked to do an article on color balance.

I'm greatful for the compliment, but unfortunately, I think whoever asked is going to be a little disapppointed in my response.

I don't have a camera that shoots in RAW, so for me the most important thing is to try and get the color balance as close as possible straight out of the camera. This is usually best accomplished by selecting one of the color balance settings on the camera. In my experience, I have found that more often than not, the custom white balance setting (where you point the camera at the white in the picture, and it automatically sets it) isn't that great. It's important to try a few of the different whitebalance settings, to see which one gives the truest representation of the lighting in your photograph.

After I've done I take the image into photoshop (or other editing program) and edit the brightness and contrast until the photo looks it's absolute best. I don't think any of my images posted on this website have been edited in Photoshop, but rather some basic editing softwares.

Another thing that might be of use to you: editing photos is most easily done on a CRT (cathode ray tube) monitor rather than an LCD. Some of the photos in my gallery I edited on my laptop, and I wasn't careful enough and there are some color issues. It's definitely something you should watch out for.

I hope this is a good point in the right direction for some people who are new to this site. Any experienced user will be far past these little hints.

Even if you don't have Photoshop, this site does a good job explaining everything:

http://photography.about.com/od/imagemanipulation/a/a052904_2.htm