White balance eyedropper sample size

When I put a Grey Card into a photo shoot to gauge the white balance, then use White Balance in Aperture, I think that it only samples one pixel. This gives some widely varying white balance setting, depending on where I sample.
Can I get a 3 x 3 or 5 x 5 pixel sample for White Balance?

http://www.apple.com/feedback/aperture.html

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White Balance eyedropper not working?

Hi all,
Has anyone else tried doing a white balance adjustment in Aperture 2.0.1 with the eyedropper?
In 1.5.x, it worked great -- I just clicked the eyedropper, clicked on a known-neutral-grey area of my photo, and the white balance was adjusted very well.
In Aperture 2.0.1, I click on the eyedropper, then click on the same neutral-grey area, and for a second the photo adjusts beautifully -- then the white balance controls seem to randomly adjust back, and I get a photo that is no more color balanced than the original one.
Is anyone else seeing this, and/or does anyone have any ideas why Aperture won't stick with the initial adjustment I'm seeing?
Thanks in advance!
\marc

Still not working. I think the root cause of the problem is the mechanics of using the tool itself; I hope this screen shot shows up below ...
Here I have APPLIED EFFECTS open, and have selected Midtones (Greys) to be expanded so that the eyedropper and other details appear:
Now, just below where it has a box and "Impacted frame area in white" (which I know is a checkbox allowing the area effected to be seen), there is a little color box and an eyedropper.
What EXACTLY do I do to select (activate) the eyedropper and subsequently tell the program what I feel should be grey in the selected clip?
As mentioned before, I can click it and the cursor briefly changes to the same shape as the eyedropper. But as soon as I move the cursor a fraction, it changes back to an arrow (normal cursor) shape. Even then, going to the area I need to select in the image, and then clicking it, does exactly nothing to the appearance of the image shown -- even if the colors start way off. No correction at all. It is as if the tool does nothing. The color wheels below all this DO work however - it's just the eyedropper that doesn't do anything. This just cannot be Adobe's intention. I am convinced there must be some flaw in how I am selecting the tool itself. And the user guide - needless to say - is worthless in explaining the mechanics.
So very frustrating. This appears to be the only thing wrong with the program - nothing else seems amiss.
NOTE: To add insult to injury, this promised white/gray/black balance feature and the three-way-color corrector is the SOLE REASON I purchased the software. Funny.

Camera Raw crashes with use of white balance eye dropper.

Using PS CC2014.2.1
Since this update, whenever I use the white balance eyedropper in Camera Raw, if placed over an over exposed region, instead of the dialogue box popping up to warn that the area is too bright, the system just freezes. Have to launch task manager and close PS.
If eyedropper is placed on non-over exposed (not clipped) area, it seems alright. Anyone else experiencing this?

Due to the current unavailability of clairvoyants and mind-readers in the forum, we respectfully request you supply sensible, complete details.
BOILERPLATE TEXT:
Note that this is boilerplate text.
If you give complete and detailed information about your setup and the issue at hand,
such as your platform (Mac or Win),
exact versions of your OS, of Photoshop (not just "CS6", but something like CS6v.13.0.6) and of Bridge,
your settings in Photoshop > Preference > Performance
the type of file you were working on,
machine specs, such as total installed RAM, scratch file HDs, total available HD space, video card specs, including total VRAM installed,
what troubleshooting steps you have taken so far,
what error message(s) you receive,
if having issues opening raw files also the exact camera make and model that generated them,
if you're having printing issues, indicate the exact make and model of your printer, paper size, image dimensions in pixels (so many pixels wide by so many pixels high). if going through a RIP, specify that too.
etc.,
someone may be able to help you (not necessarily this poster, who is not a Windows user).
a screen shot of your settings or of the image could be very helpful too.
Please read this FAQ for advice on how to ask your questions correctly for quicker and better answers:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/419981?tstart=0
Thanks!

Lightroom 4 and white balance tool

In Lightroom 4 i use the whtie balance tool and find point that give as high as 99% reading and it would work to set it as the reference point. Today i did the same thing and got a message that said Lightroom could not obtain white balance from that spot and to try again. i've never seen this before. even if i used a spot that was 100% reflective. It would just render colors off.
Today i did the same thing and a message came on the screen that Lightroom couldn't obtain white balance from that spot and i should try again. i was only able to obtain white balance if i used a spot that reflected no more than approx. 90%.
what has changed?
thank you

The White Balance Picker sample area in LR4 can now be adjusted using the 'Scale' slider, so yes it has changed from LR3:
http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/white_balance_eyedropper_tool_option
The readings you see in the LR Histogram in no way reflect the actual raw data values. The White Balance picker needs a sample area that has no raw data clipping in any channel (i.e.All four R,G, B, G2 channels 99% or less). I suspect the 99% area you are sampling has raw data clipping in one or more channels. If interested you can download RawDigger to examine the image file to confirm:
http://www.rawdigger.com/
I suggest choosing a sample area that is well below 99%, such as 85% to 95%.

Real Problems With White Balance Tool

I attempted to white balance an image I took using the White Balance eyedropper tool, and selecing an area on a Grey Balance Target. Well, Aperture is doing a horrible job of white balancing the image. With Aperture, I exported the image to Photoshop and white balanced it using levels.
You can see the side by side images here along with the corresponding RGB values. The image on the left, is the one that Aperture "thinks" is white balanced. Since there doesn't seem to be a way to check RGB values within Aperture I can't say what they really are, other than to use OS X's Digital Color Meter, which shows exactly what Photoshop is telling me...the image has a definite blue cast to it.
http://www.johnburdick.us/WhiteBalance.jpg
I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, or if Aperture's white balance function is not working as advertised..
Any suggestions? Has anyone else had these issues?
PowerMac G5 Dual 2.3 4.5Gb RAM Mac OS X (10.4.2)
PowerMac G5 Dual 2.3 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Apple are being deliberately deceptive on this issue.
I have been to a couple of demo's at their store and watched the demonstrator use the same wedding photo each time to highlight the power of the white balance eye-dropper. I think this is the only photo on the face of the earth to give a half-way decent result from the eye-dropper (and even then it's still a little blue).
When I cornered the demonstrator on this specific issue he tried to use another image (one of the Tibet portraits) and the results were horrible and he was forced to concede that this tool was lousy.
I simply don't believe the software developers weren't aware of the shortcomings of this and yet they still decided to release and insult their customers with it.
But this is a minor issue compared with the overall quality of the images coming out of the RAW adjustments.
I can't understand why photographers are still fighting to make this application work. Sure, as a image selection/management tool it's very nice but beyond that it's garbage.
I've returned my copy to the Apple Store where I purchased it and received a full refund thankfully.

Premiere Elements 13 Eyedropper for white balance, gray, and black NOT WORKING. Help!

I'm using Premiere Elements 13.1 on an iMac, and trying to adjust the white balance on a clip with ZERO success. The main reason for this is that I cannot utilize the "eyedropper" selector; I know what should appear white, gray, and black, but cannot select those items.
In the Three-Way Color Corrector there are Eyedroppers to use to specify areas of known color range. I have tried without success to select ANY of the eyedroppers...
I have clicked on it - NOTHING
I have held the left mouse on it and attempted to drag it onto the frame - NOTHING
I have right-clicked it - NOTHING
The eyedroppers are not greyed out and they do respond when clicked. I have hit Reset button galore. I have restarted the program.
I have held my mouth funny - NOTHING :-)
When my cursor is hovering over the tool, it changes to an eyedropper. If I click, nothing happens when the cursor is moved - the cursor changes right back into its regular arrow shape. The cursor does nothing to the image if an item is clicked....there is no change to anything on the monitor.
I am a longtime Photoshop user but new to Premiere Elements. This dropper seems to work nothing like the PS ones. In fact, it doesn't work at all...so far.
Can someone please tell me what I need to do to simply select the eyedropper and take it onto the image and select the white (or gray or black)??? Before I go bananas (may be too late)? THANK YOU!

Still not working. I think the root cause of the problem is the mechanics of using the tool itself; I hope this screen shot shows up below ...
Here I have APPLIED EFFECTS open, and have selected Midtones (Greys) to be expanded so that the eyedropper and other details appear:
Now, just below where it has a box and "Impacted frame area in white" (which I know is a checkbox allowing the area effected to be seen), there is a little color box and an eyedropper.
What EXACTLY do I do to select (activate) the eyedropper and subsequently tell the program what I feel should be grey in the selected clip?
As mentioned before, I can click it and the cursor briefly changes to the same shape as the eyedropper. But as soon as I move the cursor a fraction, it changes back to an arrow (normal cursor) shape. Even then, going to the area I need to select in the image, and then clicking it, does exactly nothing to the appearance of the image shown -- even if the colors start way off. No correction at all. It is as if the tool does nothing. The color wheels below all this DO work however - it's just the eyedropper that doesn't do anything. This just cannot be Adobe's intention. I am convinced there must be some flaw in how I am selecting the tool itself. And the user guide - needless to say - is worthless in explaining the mechanics.
So very frustrating. This appears to be the only thing wrong with the program - nothing else seems amiss.
NOTE: To add insult to injury, this promised white/gray/black balance feature and the three-way-color corrector is the SOLE REASON I purchased the software. Funny.

After adjusting white balance in ACR, images are opening in Ps at a different size.

Can anyone explain like I'm 5 why this is happening, and how to prevent it? Thanks!
Negatives are scanned at 3200dpi, and 24bit depth. This is the metadata from Bridge.
Default settings in Camera Raw
After opening in Photoshop.

Scanned direclty into photoshop. And if I open the tif from explorer or bridge, bypassing Camera Raw, it opens as the 75mb file size. I thought it might have somethign to do with the color, as Bridge labels bits/channel as 'Bit depth', but the images all are 24bit, even after White Balance correction in Camera Raw.
Thanks for taking the time to help me figure this out. It's been causing a huge problem this week.

Can you adjust the Sample Size in LR?

In Photoshop, you can set the size of the eyedropper to sample a single pixel, 3x3 average of 9 pixels, 5x5, 11x11, etc. It can make a big difference when sampling a single pixel as opposed to the average of a larger area.
Can the sample size be set in LightRoom?
If not, what is the sample size in LR when you run your cursor over the image? Does this vary depending on the displayed magnification of the image?
Thanks,
Lou Dina

White Balance and the Color Sampler are not the same unless things have changed. White Balance is always 5x5 image pixels while the Color Sampler is 5x5 screen pixels. Therefore, one can increase the
accuracy of the color sampler by zooming in beyond 1:1. In the case of White Balance, I don’t think that’s true, again, unless that's been recently changed. Yes, kind of confusing. Bottom line though, zoom in to do precise work.

White balancing?

1.) In Camera Raw, if you set the white balance using the White Balance tool it changes the image, so if you set the White Balance again, it is now basing it on the new colors that were just adjusted. Is that a good idea? OR should you undo it to get the original colors if you are not happy with the white balance results before you want to try again?
2.) Is there a built in way to white balance directly in PSCS5?
Thanks.

1. So even if you you change the white balance multiple times and change the way the white appears, it is still sampling from the original file?
2. By clicking on white in PS with the graypoint eyedropper, is that automatically setting the white balance without having to do anything else with the levels?
Thanks.

D3 + "Auto" White Balance in LR2 = +30 Magenta

I have been finding some problems with the "Auto" white balance setting in LR2...
Since I started shooting RAW with my D3 (while still shooting with my D70 in the same locations) LR2 likes to give me a +30 Magenta whenever I choose Auto no matter where or what I'm shooting.
I don't suffer the same adjustment shooting RAW on the D70 (interchanging the same lenses.)
Anybody else seeing this issue? I'm shooting Auto WB on the D3 almost all the time and I end up having to manually perform any WB tweaks in LR otherwise everything is too "pink."

While generally agreeing that a gray-card white-balance measurement is more accurate and eyedropping something that glows in UV light is a problem, in this particular case, if the dress does indeed look white to the eye, and the people that will be viewing and purchasing the pictures expect it to be white, then white-balancing on the dress can be ok.
In this particular instance the issue seems to be that there is mixed lighting between the sky and the trees so the particular part of the dress being eyedropped changes things, and the angle of the gray-card would make a difference, so the multiple angles of fabric in the dress may offer a wider range of "targets" where one is more accurate than the gray-card.
I wish LR would allow the Auto WB to be restricted to the cropped area of a photo, so you could crop it down to just the gray-card or in this case the front of the dress and have it guess more correctly.
The maximum area that can be sampled by the WB-dropper is too small and the area sampled for the Auto WB is too large for LR to be the most helpful in certain situations.
Being able to eyedropper a non-neutral area, such as the skin and compute the color-balance as compared to a library of skin tones, would also be very helpful.
Elements lets you color-balance a photo based on skin tones, and you can do this thing by hand in Photoshop Levels/Curves by referring to RGB values, but I wish LR would be helpful in this regard, as well.
I realize this is what the DNG Profile Converter and Colormunki are letting you do, but having to create a permanent profile and install it and use it are not the same as being able to create an image-specific profile and use it in place of WB across several images.
Why shouldn't I be able to have someone hold up a color-checker and have LR compute an image-specific color-balance based on that.
The other thing LR should allow is have an eyedropper help with determining the highlight and shadow tint hue/sat values.

White balance dropper -- any way to keep it "on"?

Hi all,
If I click on the White Balance dropper, then head all the way over to the picture to click on a grey spot, if I don't like the results, I have to go all the way back to the dropper, click on it again, and come back to another gray spot.
Is there a way to keep the dropper "on" until I turn it off? Or I suppose there's a keyboard shortcut? How do you all do this, checking a number of spots for white balance?
Thanks!

There is a keyboard shortcut for the white balance dropper as well, but it's not documented anywhere. I'm unsure why this is.
And it only works if you have the adjustment panel showing .
Anyway, command-shift-w will bring up the white balance dropper, so you don't have to keep mousing.
Also the shift key note above will work as well, in that you can continually sample. In fact if you keep the shift key held down and move the eyedropper it will show you continuous real-time white balance changes.

Adjusting white balance

In CS5, how can I adjust the white balance of an image? I open it with the Levels and select the Sample in Image to Set White Point and I select the whitest part of the image.
1. Is this the correct way to do this? What if the white is off white or not quite white. Is there a more accurate way? With video you set the camera with a white card. Do you use a white swatch to bring in to calibrate the images?
2. What if the image does not have white in it for me to select? Can I bring in a white swatch to do this?
Thanks!

In camera raw mode the third tool is the white balance tool. If you are starting with an image that is not a raw format, find it in adobe bridge, right click on, and choose open in raw.
The methods I may use after that depends on the type of image(hi key, lo key, contrast, rgb, cmyk) and in what area the problem is(1/4s, mids, shads). On a white shirt you should have better success using the middle neutral eyedropper in levels and clicking on an area which you want neutral, so you do not blow out your detail. I also often find great results with channel mixer.
If you are in CMYK, you may use curves and move your highlights to 5,3,3,1 for a neutral highlight.
Yes shoot your photos including a white card or grayscale and try the white balance tool.

Correcting White Balance with no white in shot

Does anyone have any tips for correcting white balance when the footage has no white objects to act as a reference? This was the classic mistake of shooting outdoors with an indoor setting. We were rushing to utilise a gap in the rain!
Also, is there any way to tell Premiere how to correct WB via a sort of colour matching, by pointing it towards a correctly white balanced still of the scene?
Thanks
Davyd

This is a really tricky thing. There's a lot of ways to approach it. I had similar problems with a WB correction mismatch between presets on my 7D and 70D. No white in either shot.
I exported a few frames in to PS first to get a rough idea with what I was dealing with.
Use the Info window to check something grey.
Alternately, if there is nothing grey, you can use skin tone patches. This is a common tool used by skin retouchers in PS. Grab a small sample or two from the desired skin tones, either from a 5x5 grab with the eyedropper or just grabbing a small section with the lasso tool and Gaussian Blurring that to heck and back. Once you get a bit of a palette of skin tones you like, you can use that as a reference for your work with the Fast Color Corrector.
To be honest, I feel the FCC is a little underpowered and I wish I had my AAVC 6 Channel HSL tool from Vegas when color correcting.
As a Photoshop geek, I am a little uncomfortable with the video color correction toolset.
To export a frame, click on the viewing panel and hit Ctrl-Shift-E.
Try opening the frames in Adobe Camera Raw and you can get some temp and tint values that can also help you with your Prem Pro toolset.
Remember to watch out for channel clipping when making dramatic changes in WB.

How-To: White-balance your image properly Attn: Aperture Team @ Apple

Since Aperture's white balance eye-dropper is more-or-less useless I have taken it upon myself to discover a means to accurately white-balance an image using Aperture.
My method is as follows:
1. Open my desired image in Aperture and hit Z to view at 100%
2. Open up /Applications/Utilities/DigitalColor Meter
3. In DigitalColor Meter, go into preferences and select the following options:
Magnification Factor: 8x
Refresh behavior: Refresh continuously
[X] Float window above other apps
4. Set DigitalColor Meter's "Aperture Size" to the third or 4th notch to get a fairly large radius
5. Move the cursor over the image until DigitalColor Meter's "Aperture" box is over a portion of the image that you want neutral and hit Command(Apple)-L
to lock it at that position
6. Adjust the White Balance controls in Aperture until DigitalColor Meter reads equal (or approximately equal) R G B values
You now have an image that's white balanced accurately for the area you selected. If it is not satisfactory, click on DigitalColor Meter and hit Command(Apple)-L to unlock and repeat the 5th and 6th steps above with a new area.
Notice to Apple's Aperture Team: This is how white balance should work in Aperture. The white balance eye-dropper currently produces pretty random results. When working on this tool for a future update, look at allowing the user to set a radius for sampling the image and build the DigitalColor Meter into the application. This would bring Aperture closer to being a real professional tool.
Dual G5 2.5GHz, 4GB RAM, GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Test Results:
Aperture 1.1:
Image Temperature: 3594
Tint: -17
When using the white balance tool on a white section of a photo, the RGB values changed from R 255 G 234 B 192 to R 255 G 230 B 197 and the Temperature changed to 3946 and Tint to 12.
The photo still remained unacceptable.
When usint the white balance tool on a grey section of the same photo, the RGB values cahnge from R 211 G 178 B 126 to R 208 G 180 B 162 and the Temperatue changed to 3154 and Tint to 2.
The photo still remained unacceptable but was notably improved.
Using Capture One Pro, the results were as follows:
Temperatue: 3850
Tint: -10
When using the white balance tool on a white section of the same photo, the RGB values changed from R 255 G 241 B 200 to R 244 G 244 B 244 and the Temperature changed to 2500 and Tint to -16.
Photo was very acceptable with no perceivable colour cast.
When using the white balance tool on a grey section of the same photo, the RGB values changed from R 190 G 153 B 108 to R 153 G 153 B 153 and Temperature to 2550 and Tint to -2.
Photo was very acceptable with no perceivable colour cast.
From this quick test on a photo, I can draw the following conclusions:
1. Aperture interprets temperature and tint data differently from Capture One Pro, although this likely due to the use of a camera profile within Capture One Pro;
2. Using the white balance tool in Aperture on a "white" section does not neutralize the RGB values;
3. Using the white balance tool in Aperture on a "white" section does not correctly remove a colour cast within a photograph;
4. Using the white balance tool in Aperture on a "grey" section does not neutralize the RGB values; and
5. Using the white balance tool in Aperture on a "grey" section does not correctly remove a colour cast within a photograph, although it does work better.

Wrong white balance in Bridge

Since I reinstalled my computer I have a problem with displaying Canon CR2 files in Bridge - white balance in just incorrect. When I open it in Camera RAW, for about 1 second it displays still incorrectly, but then colours of the picture change and white balance is correct - I can even see that histogram changes slightly at the same moment. Than it opens in Photoshop correctly too. White balance is set to "as shot". I have PS CS6 and ACR 8.1 as part of Creative Suite 6 Design & Web Premium (all updates are installed). Anyone can solve the problem? I can say that I tried to install Creative Suite on 2 different computers and the problem is in both cases.

But when I open fool preview in Bridge (space, then left mouse click), after a short time when preview renders, the picture becomes fine. So I wonder what picture is displayed in Bridge non-full-screen preview?
Let's first focus on your preference settings. Try these settings:
In Bridge under Adobe Bridge CC open the Camera Raw preferences.
In the section 'Default Image Settings' make sure the the above 2 are NOT checked (Auto tone and auto grayscale)
It is useful to have checked defaults to specific serial number when you did generate a custom default in ACR and iso specific is only useful if you have saved all different iso settings as different ACR defaults.
Then go to same menu and open Bridge Preferences.
In the section Cache under options have only a checkmark in front of 'Keep 100% previews in Cache', don't use the option to export cache to folder.
Also increase the slider for cache size a bit, somewhere half way or left to halfway should be good enough.
Under Advanced / miscellaneous only have a check mark in front of generate monitor sized previews, leave the other 2 blank.
Then in the content window with the problem files be sure to have no hidden cache folders. Use menu view / show hidden files and search for document icons with BridgeCache and BridgeCacheT. If they are here delete both to the trash.
Then restart Bridge and try again
Also might be related to not having synced the color settings in Bridge when having more Suite apps installed from CC.
Any advice how can I check it?
When you have only PS installed Bridge uses the color settings you have saved in there, otherwise you should sync the Bridge color settings for correct colormanagement.
In PS go to the menu edit / Color settings
Check if your settings are what you want and either read the name already given or save these settings under a proper name.
Then in Bridge use the same route (edit/Color Settings and check if the saved settings file is active in the list (Bridge tells you in this menu if the settings are synced or not so that should be easy to check.

White balance eyedropper sample size

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