Mishka's Studio -The Importance of White Balance

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This month, I am going over the importance of setting white balance.

White balance is used in photography to adjust color of the picture/camera settings to ambient light. The aim of color balance is to get lighting to look more natural, but is also used to create artistic effects to simulate mood.

In the picture below, I made the same picture using white balance adjusted from 4000 - 10000 Kelvin (K), and you can see the effect changing the white balance has on the outcome. Now most cameras with auto settings, will adjust this to a preset based on user preferences. I however use RAW image settings, so the color balance must be adjusted later in photoshop or a RAW image processor - like Nikon Raw. There are many advantages to adjusting white balance via raw, and almost no reason not too. Pictures captured in JPG have no adjustable white balance, and therefore color management is difficult, but can be done using Cyan-Magenta-Yellow adjusters, but I only do the adjusting in post. Many times I guess the color balance to be around 6K, and leave the camera set to that. Almost never is the color less than 5K, as the result is too blue for me, and this cold effect does not help create a warm mood. Also, the JPG bakes in the color balance, so adjusting it in PS is a bit difficult.

Click on image for full size & gallery

color-wheel-pic

As you can see from the two pics below, the pics were shot in ambient light, mid day (both pics) and white balance was set around 6K. If I needed a bit warmer effect, I would use 6.5-7K in photoshop. So in summary, use manual white balance when possible.

Sometimes I use a cooler white balance, and if I change my mind, I can easily adjust it in either PS - Camera RAW or Nikon Raw (Free from Nikon)

Click image for Gallery and full-size photos.

 

 

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Comments

You probably did not know this, Mishka, but you are my secret partner in getting Koen to improve his photographic skills. Of course he is not gonna admit it, but my complaining has made him a very loyal reader of your blog. So, please keep them coming and keep it simple.

Some day we will succeed to make a real photographer out of him! winkyes

 

Stellai