Correcting White Balance

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wiseguy

Correcting White Balance

Post by wiseguy »

There has to be an easy way to correct the white balance in an image shot in mixed conditions (such as a gym or auditorium or church). The auto white balance in my camera (a Canon G3) only goes so far, then it pukes. Does anybody know of a plug-in, filter, etc. that you can use. Maybe something that you can point to what is supposed to be a white thing, then let the software figure out what has to be done to make it white...

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Post by HaraldHeim »

There are several tools or filters for color-correcting photos and regaining a correct white balance, but I found them quite disappointing.

The only one that I can really recommend is iCorrect from http://www.picto.com
Still iCorrect is a bit inconveniantly to use and you need to read the manual to be able to fully use it. Additionally it is the most expensive tool for that task that I found. Some photos can't be corrected perfectly with it.

I'm currently working on a color correction tool myself. I think it should become available by the end of January at www.thepluginsite.com. I tried to avoid the disadvantages of other tools and to make it easy to use. According to my tests it also produces much better results that any other tool.

Roo
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Post by Roo »

Can you set White Balance manually in you camera to allow for certain lighting conditions?

While is won't always work well for underexposure or overexposure, you can try adjusting both levels and curves.

Before you make those adjustments manually though try using:
Autolevels - (if this throws the exposure way off go Edit>>>Fade Auto Level, and play with the control to see what happens

Autocontrast - (again using the Edit>>>Fade technique to reduce the effects if it's too much)

Again using the auto commans does not often work to correct exposure mistakes, you may need to spend some time manually adjusting levels and curves.

And then finally use Unsharp Mask.....play with the controls until you get a sharpness that looks good.

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Post by HaraldHeim »

I use the Canon G2 myself. To avoid color casts in many cases you have to use the Manual White Balance feature. Of course, it doesn't help always.

Most people don't know this feature, forget to use it, find it to inconveniant or even use it incorrectly. Some cameras don't even have one. So often you still need a software to correct some photos.

Using the auto-correction tools of PSP or Photoshop often produces bad results. Correcting the colors manually is often a tedious task when corerecting a single photo, not to mention when you want to correct several dozen photos. Besides you need some practice and experience to get a good result when manually correcting photos. So it is not a task for beginners.

A color correction software should incorporate most of the "expert knowledge" of photo correction and only asks the user to do a few easy and basic tasks. Makes life a lot easier!

Shimmertje

White balance

Post by Shimmertje »

I used to have a Canon Ixus and have tried a Powershot S40. In both cases there is a problem with the white balance in low-light conditions, like indoors or at night. I've fiddled with the manual white balance - telling the Ixus it's fluorescent or tungsten light as required, but even then things are pretty bad. I get all kinds of fuzzy blue shades without flash, and things are really gloomy with the flash unless the subject is very close.

I've found that if the original picture is bad, brightness, contrast, gamma etc just don't help very much. I'm not an expert at this, so perhaps if I used unsharp mask, autolevels or autocontrast I could've created something better.

My solution was to switch to Olympus. Somehow the Olympus CCD works better at night/indoors. It's not perfect, but it's a LOT better (and if I had the Olympus digital SLR, even better!). I don't know if the other camera brands work better than this, but if there's something out there that's even better - or a plugin available to fix things - I'd like to know about it too.

You can contrast the difference at
http://community.webshots.com/user/shimmertje

The albums on top are taken with the Olympus C-40 Zoom (4 megapixels, mostly unretouched).
The album named Dad's birthday is taken with the Canon Ixus (2 megapixels).

And to see what the Olympus digital SLR can do (1.5 megapixels):
http://community.webshots.com/user/shanlung9

Plug

Post by Plug »

If you are going to shoot multiple shots in the same lighting, include a greycard in one of the shots. You can then with in Photoshop, use the middle eyedropper in levels.

spectralDesigns
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white balance correction

Post by spectralDesigns »

I find ColorPilot by Invention Pilot Software excellent and easy to use. The free trial only works with small pictures, but you get the idea through the dozen or so animated tutorials for different ways to use it - like using the grass color from one picture and changing to that color in several different pictures and much more. $20 to register, but well worth it. I believe the Plug-in for Paint Shop Pro (Photo Shop compatible) I believe was free.
Roland Parent
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Spectral Designs
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color balance correction

Post by spectralDesigns »

OOOPS! You can find Color Pilot at: http://www.colorpilot.com/
Roland Parent
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Images in Stained Glass

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Post by HaraldHeim »

I have tested ColorPilot some time ago and found it confusing and hard to use. You must know that I'm a pro, so I don't want to imagine how difficult it is for someone with less knowledge.

Also ColorPilot doesn't do a perfect job on correcting images, although it may be good for artistic color effects.

I'm about to release a color correction plugin at the end of the week which will work perfect for correcting the colors and exposure of photos.
Have a look at www.thepluginsite.com on Saturday.

himself0314
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Post by himself0314 »

you might also want to try:
http://www.theimagingfactory.com/data/p ... ducts2.htm
--> WhiteBalance, WhitePoint, Color Equalizer, Color Correction, Chromex I
^^ VERY cool, VERY powerful, easy too


and read this interesting article:
http://www.dpreview.com/learn/Image_Tec ... eed_01.htm



hope this helps
Last edited by himself0314 on Fri May 02, 2003 1:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

HaraldHeim
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Post by HaraldHeim »

Thanks for the hints, but I already know both. Have a look at my article at
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?nam ... e&artid=45

I'm mentioning TIF WhiteBalance, Color Correction and Photoshop's Levels tool in the article.

Gina
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white balance g3

Post by Gina »

Hi guys,

I have a g3 myself and there are two extra custom settings on the dial : C1 and C2. When on C1 or C2 and trying to set the white balance, you can take a white sheet of paper and set the balance. You should get the upgrade for the software at http://www.canon.co.jp/Imaging/BeBit-e.html though because pictures taken in raw mode can't be converted rightly to jpeg or tiff (not with my software version anyway). Also the RAW plugin for photoshop is phantastic. You can change a lot including the white balance: very versatile! Also read the manual and read it again and again :roll: :wink: .

bye

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Post by HaraldHeim »

I tested the Manual White Balance of the G2 under various conditions and found that it often doesn't work very precise. Of course the Auto White Balance setting is even worse. So even with manually white balanced photos I was able to achieve improvements with ColorWasher. As far as I know the manual white balance has not been improved in the G3.

Canon supplies a simple application for converting RAW files to JPG or TIF. It lets you set various parameters, but isn't very convenient to use. I haven't looked at the Photoshop RAW plugin yet. Does anyone know the URL of a review with some screen shots?

Gina
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photoshop raw

Post by Gina »

Harald,

At http://www.adobe.com/products/tips/photoshop.html you find three movies from Russell Brown working with the raw plugin

gina

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