Using White Balance creatively

On the article Great Color starts from WB I talked about the things you can do to get a correct WB. But sometimes “correct” is subjective and WB is a subject of personal taste and creativity. Sometimes we want to achieve a totally correct WB, so that colors are reproduced accurately. Some other times we may want our pictures to have a “wrong” WB, in order to communicate a certain feeling.

The image above is a composition of 2 copies of the same image with different WB settings applied to each of them; a custom WB was applied in ACR to bring out the soft saturated qualities of the blue sea and sky, but this caused a blue cast on the white surface of the boat. The problem is, although our eyes don’t perceive the sea and sky as problematic, they do with certain colors such as white, which is a well-known color. In other words, white has to be white, if it doesn’t, something is going wrong. So I made a second copy of the image and applied a “correct” WB. Then I opened both copies in Photoshop and composite so that the white surface of the boat is the copy with the “correct” WB and the rest of the image is the copy with the custom WB. The result is a more creative approach to a rather ordinary image.     

Great color starts from WB

I don’t think I  have to ask if you have ever shot an image that looks yellowish, bluish or reddish. It happens to all of us and it’s due to incorrect white-balance (WB) settings. You see, your cameras’ “Auto White Balance” fails in some situations (in fact it fails in most situations!). As a result, colors are incorrect. So what you can do to dial with this issue? Well you have 3 options:

1.            Select a WB preset on your camera: e.g. if you are shooting indoors under a tungsten lamp, set your WB for tungsten, if you are shooting outdoors in a cloudy day, set your WB for cloudy. The problem is that not all situations you are photographing are the same; not all tungsten lamps are the same, not all cloudy days are the same.    

2.            Set a Custom WB on your camera: set your camera for custom WB and fill the frame with a middle gray or white object (you can use a dedicated middle gray card, such as Lastolite for that purpose). Take the shot and you’ll have an accurate WB. Just make sure to expose the card to the same lighting conditions as the subject you are photographing. If the lighting conditions change, you have to repeat that procedure.  

3.            One of the greatest benefits when shooting in RAW mode, it’s the ability to adjust white-balance (WB) settings in post-processing, without affecting image quality. If you are shooting JPEG, WB settings are embedded in the image and can’t be altered.  Adjusting WB in Adobe Lightroom couldn’t be easier:

(a)          Import the RAW files in Lightroom.

(b)          Go to “Develop Module”:

(c)           Click on the “Basic” Tab:

Here you have several options; you can select a WB preset:

you can use the Temp and Tint sliders to manually adjust WB:

or you can use the WB selector tool to click on an area of the image that is either middle gray or white:

WB tips

·           Avoid using “Auto White Balance” since the results are not consistent. Instead, get used to set a Custom WB on camera. If you don’t have time to do so, set your camera to “Auto White Balance” and take an image with the gray card included in the frame. In that way you will be able to correct WB very easily in Lightroom by using the "WB selector tool".

·           Perfectly correct WB may not be what you wish; e.g. when shooting portraits, you may want to have a warmer look. That’s easy; create a correct WB and then move the “Temp slider” in Lightroom slightly to the right to achieve that warmer look.

Converting a large amount of images from one format to another

This is a quick tip for converting a large amount of images from one format to another (eg. from RAW to jpg).  

1.            Open Bridge and navigate to the folder where your images resign.

2.            Select the images you want to convert (you can use Ctrl + A to select them all, or you can click on the first image to select it and then Ctrl + click to select the rest of the images).

3.            Go to Tools > Photoshop > Image Processor:

4.            A dialog will appear in Photoshop with several options. You can choose to convert the selected images to either JPEG. PSD (Photoshop format) or Tiff. For JPEG ultimate quality enter 12. If you are not going to post-process the images, select “Convert Profile to sRGB” in order to create smaller files. You can further choose to run an action during the conversion (e.g. you can run an action for converting your images to B&W):

5.            After you are done, click “Run”. Photoshop will load each image and convert it to the image format you have selected.

6.            That’s it! It’s fast and very easy!

Your camera has a life expectancy!

Did you know that your camera has a life expectancy which depends on how many times the shutter was released? Most Nikon models are rated for 150.000 shutter releases (D3 series are rated for 300.000 releases). Once you reach this limit you should either buy a new camera or replace the shutter.

There is an easy way to view how many images you shot so far:

1.            Download and install Opanda IExif (the free version displays only JPEG files, but this not a problem since you can convert your NEF files to JPEGs by using your ACR).

2.            Open the latest image created by your camera with Opanda IExif.

3.            Scroll down until you see “Total number of shutter releases”.

This is your latest shutter count value!