White Balance Why ?

Hello All, I am by professional standards a beginner videographer of about 5 years experience. I have seen lots of advice around saying set your white balance for this or that lighting. I film a lot of theatre shows with lots of vivid colour, when I used auto white balance the colours were always wrong different shades ETC so I bought a grey card and set my white balance using this and the colours now look very similar to what I am filming. My question is why would you change your white balance according to lighting ? surely once it is set correctly you want it to accurately reflect what the camera is seeing.

I seldom have the opportunity to do a manual white balance at stage shows, because when I arrive to set up cameras, the house lights are on and the curtain closed and I have no access to the "actual show lighting" until the show is going. So I just use the "Incandescent" setting on all cameras and that has worked well for me. Lighting can and will change throughout the show also, so at least if all cameras are set the same, the color is consistent and I can make tweaks when editing.
Of course, when I have the opportunity I will always go for the manual white balance (or preset that looks good) for best results.
Different light sources (sunlight, overcast, incandescent, flourescent, etc.) all have different color "temperatures". Some are warmer (redder), some are cooler (more blue), and so forth. I vaguely remember some of this from sixtth-grade science class, with "kelvin" numbers and such. The human eye compensates for this automatically and always see white objects as white, and other colors then follow suit. Video cameras are not so good at this - AWB attempts it, but doesn't always get it right. That is why the presets and manual option, to TELL the camera, THIS IS WHITE. Once it is calibrated to what "white" is, then all the colors look correct under that particular light source.
To a degree, footage shot with the wrong WB can be corrected during editing, but often it can be so far out of whack that it never looks quite right. There is no substitute for getting it right when shooting! If someone looks like a blueberry or a sun-burned Martian on tape, good luck getting a nice skin tone in post....
Thanks
Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

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Exif white balance - why can't I see it?

I have a Canon 5D and I'm trying to figure out how to display the camera's white balance settings in Aperture. I have added White Balance and White Balance Index to the metadata tab, but the only thing showing is either a 1 or a 0 in White Balance. I'd like to see what setting was used on the camera, such as Auto, Daylite, Tungsten, Custom, Kelvin, etc.
Thanks,
Andrew

Try looking at the White Balance in the adjustment panel. It should show the value that it received from the WB setting on your camera.
TO associate the different WB settings you see there with the Daylight/Tungsten/etc, you could take a series of photos starting with the first WB Setting and so on and then place them in Aperture and check the values in the WB settings panel.

Lightroom: Why does auto white balance no longer work after changing the camera calibration profile?

I'm using NEF raw files from Nikon.
Lets say for example I import a NEF file into Lightroom (v4) and click on 'auto' for white balance. The white balance in the image is adjusted correctly (somewhat). However, if I then change the camera profile (in the camera calibration section) from 'adobe standard' to 'camera standard' then the white balance in the image becomes very wrong. I then have to set the white balance back to 'as shot' and correct it manually instead.
Why would 'auto white balance' no longer work just because I change the profile from 'adobe standard' to 'camera standard'?
Any ideas?

Works as expected here...
Which Lr version and what OS??

Why does adobe camera raw keep saving images with the incorrect white balance?

I am having an issue when I edit images. here is the scenerio:
I choose 50 Raw files and open them in Camera Raw.
I edit each individually - many of them have different white balances.
Once I have each image how I want them, I select all and click done.
Sometimes all the edits are saved correctly, but very often all the changes are saved correctly except white balance. The program seems to take the white balance from one image and applies it to all the images.
Why??? Very frustrating to have to go back and individually edit all the white balances again.
Thanks!

It seems to not happen if I slow down a few seconds before I click select all and then done.
That should not be the problem, once you changed settings and hitting done they all should be applied immediately. It even is not needed to first select all, that is only needed when you need to open or save the files.
But I still don't know why it would only change the white balance in every shot and not everything.
If it happens again could you first in Bridge select one of the none changed files and with right mouse click menu choose select purge cache for selection?
And can you provide more details about system version, app versions and file types?

Help! Why does Aperture automatically adjust my white balance?

Hey,
Just wondering if anybody knew why Aperture seems to want to automatically adjust the white balance settings of the RAW .NEF images I've been importing. I mean, on an example image, the in camera white balance was about 5900K with no hue adjustments, but when I imported it into aperture, it looked completely different. Sure enough, Aperture had set a color temp of 5475K and a hue of -22. If I wanted it to be adjusted, I would've asked, but I spent the time getting the white balance right in camera for a reason. I really don't want to have to go back and adjust every image manually. That would defeat the purpose. Please, lend some insight.

I have a D80. Do you think apple will eventually develop a solution to this problem, or some sort of workaround? In the meantime, might I be better off just using the proprietary software, like captureNX? Or, how about adobe camera raw?

Why does my white balance temperature slider have 1-100 values?

Why does my white balance temperature slider have 1-100 values instead of a sliding Kelvin value?

Thanks Rob. I used two Mark III bodies on a job. One had just been sent back from being repaired by Canon and apparently they reset everything. I didn't even check the file type because I only ever shoot RAW.

Why does daylight white balance add +10 to tint?

Everytime I take a picture outside, import it into lightroom, and select daylight white balance, +10 is added to the tint and all my pictures have a reddish tint to them? I know I can just change the tint back to 0, but I was just wondering why they would do this? What benefit does it have? And can this setting be adjusted?

Daylight is a fabulous earthy warm colour in California, in Cape Town and much of the Western Cape of South Africa, Australia is a little more reddy and the UK is very blue, great that a preset reckons that all these are the same!
I'm talking from a RAW perspective here, I find JPEG just cant cope with selecting auto and then hoping to rescue colour balance (IMHO)
I find for much of my landscape and arctitectural photography that I click daylight, look at it, click auto, look at that and then pick and choose, usually winding down the magenta close to zero as any shot with green life and foliage often look better with a tiny bit more green in them. However, any people shots need to be looked at as green people look like zombies, and the magenta can be a little more kind - certainly on white faces.
So, use it carefully and sometimes the auto is reasonable, or a good place to tweak the magenta and warmth.

Why does my infrared custom white balance not load into Lightroom or CameraRaw?

The preview shows the correct WB, but the full render removes WB and any monochromatic color profiles.
Correct WB that I want. As seen from back of camera
Once the full preview loads. DO NOT WANT.
White balance is at 2000, the coolest it can go. I cannot recreate the custom WB that is in camera. I can make all of the B&W, but I want the custom WB so I can do a proper channel mix in PS.
Thank you for any help.

You can use the DNG Profile Editor to add a negative bias to the WB settings in an existing camera profile and save it as a new profile (for IR) so you can adjust the effective WB lower than 2000K:
http://stevencastle.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/processing-infrared-shots-in-adobe-camera-raw /
It still won’t pick up what the camera did, but you can adjust things lower, at least.
If this one page doesn’t make sense Google for (DNG Profile Editor IR white balance)

Why is there no white balance info in 3.3.1?

I want to transfer my iPhoto library over to Aperture, but am reluctant to do so until I have familiarised myself with the new program. (I have over 23,000 photos in iPhoto!)
As a start, I have imported a few of my recent photos from iPhoto so that I can find my way around Aperture. One thing puzzles me. I can see the white balance information for each photo in iPhoto but the white balance field is greyed out in the Aperture metadata, and there is no 'cloud' or 'sun' picture at the top right of the Info panel, even though the white balance field is ticked in the Metadata Fields panels for Exif Info and Camera Info. I really need to know which camera setting I used for each photo to help me learn how to take better photos, but as far as I can see the information is not available to me anywhere in Aperture.
I have performed Aperture Library First Aid (repaired permissions and database, and rebuilt database) but the problem still exists. I can't find anything anywhere on the internet or in Apple Support that mentions this problem. Does anyone have any ideas for me please?

Sorry, I see you are referring to the Info and not the Adjustment.
Since I am seeing both in each program, I am not sure which may be the culprit.
You could try launching Aperture while depressing the 'Option' key and creating a new test library (Create New.. button). Then export some original files from iPhoto to say the desktop > import into the Aperture test library to see if the information shows up.
If you now see the info, then there may be something going on with iPhoto that is preventing the transfer. If this is the case, you might try the iPhoto discussions since the usual helpers would know more than I about fixing a potential iPhoto library issue.
Otherwise, wait for someone more knowledgable than I to help here as I am not sure what would cause that if iPhoto isn't (and since you have already used the Aperture First Aid).

Webcam VF0070..why cant i adjust the "white balance"?

i am running windows XP home edition, with the latest updates.
i am using the webcam model VF0070. under the options for this webcam, i can change virtually every option EXCEPT the white balance? the white balance is set all the way to the LEFT.
can anyone help?

Here is a way to obtain a salutary result in a less sophisticated way:
Open picture file
Go to Enhance>adjust lighting>levels
Point to the white eyedropper (see red arrow) and click on a white object
http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1ucDJ8LGqZC0AnydNnt48SSXsRpCTV
This picture is grossly underexposed. I clicked on the white shirt of one of the players resulting in instant improvement.

White balance field to metadata panel

There's a lot of info available in the metadata/EXIF panel but the preset/program used for white balance is missing, eg. Auto, Cloudy, Tungsten, Custom, etc. Interestingly though, LR can read the actual values in the Develop module, unless I'm wrong and it is actually working it out, not reading it.

Is there any way to get detailed info of White Balance setting in Bridge Metadata ? I'm getting only "custom" ; my instructor in College needs more detailed data in my contact sheets.
Thanks for any imput
You can't get this info in a contact sheet, neither is it easy to get other then look at the camera setting you have used to shoot the files. Maybe it is somewhere hidden deep down in the exif data but I can't find it with exact numbers.
Shooting Raw those WB figures are irrelevant because you can set color temperature and tint to whatever you like. Shooting jpeg your options are limited because of the fact the Raw data is already processed and changing temperature and tint effects the whole image.
Try shoot a Raw and jpeg together from the same scene. One with daylight and one with artificial light conditions. (personally I have set my WB in camera fixed at 5500 but with auto settings you can also see the difference) Try to correct the jpeg and the Raw file in ACR and see what I mean.
And to be honest, if your instructor at College would like to have this he also should tell you why he wants it and how you can deliver it...

How to set White Balance details in Metadata Bridge Cs6 shooting with MarkIII 5D ?

Is there any way to get detailed info of White Balance setting in Bridge Metadata ? I'm getting only "custom" ; my instructor in College needs more detailed data in my contact sheets.
Thanks for any imput

Is there any way to get detailed info of White Balance setting in Bridge Metadata ? I'm getting only "custom" ; my instructor in College needs more detailed data in my contact sheets.
Thanks for any imput
You can't get this info in a contact sheet, neither is it easy to get other then look at the camera setting you have used to shoot the files. Maybe it is somewhere hidden deep down in the exif data but I can't find it with exact numbers.
Shooting Raw those WB figures are irrelevant because you can set color temperature and tint to whatever you like. Shooting jpeg your options are limited because of the fact the Raw data is already processed and changing temperature and tint effects the whole image.
Try shoot a Raw and jpeg together from the same scene. One with daylight and one with artificial light conditions. (personally I have set my WB in camera fixed at 5500 but with auto settings you can also see the difference) Try to correct the jpeg and the Raw file in ACR and see what I mean.
And to be honest, if your instructor at College would like to have this he also should tell you why he wants it and how you can deliver it...

White Balance color temperature for custom temperature shots

Hello,
I would like to understand why LR and Photoshop too are always show wrong color temperature "As Shot"?
Let say I shoot with 6000K, set manually (Canon 40D, RAW)
Canon itself says it's 6000K in the slide info, fine.
Both Adobe apps says it's 5750K!
What's going on there?
Second question - I know the light was EXACTLY 6000K, but the slide has some green in it. Picking white balance in LR gives me 5900K (which is close to the truth) and +31 Tint, which makes slide neutral.
Of course I can correct Tint manually before the shot by WB Shift in Camera, so the question is: what is the best way - to find more or less appropriate WB shift in the camera, or use WB correction in LR after all?
Thanks
UPD. My suggestion is - Adobe doesn't read custom temperature from RAW file, it's just guessing! Is that right?

The white balance value you see in Lightroom is profile specific. It reads your custom white balance and translates it so that neutrals stay neutral, which is exactly what you want. If it wouldn't do this, your neutrals would shift in color.
The best way to get a correct white balance is to shoot a white balance (grey) card or use one of those filters on your camera to measure it. You can either set it in camera from the grey card or do it with the dropper in Lightroom and sync over the series. The effect will be the same.
P.S. unless you shoot a white balance card, you do not know that the color temp of your light is exactly 6000K. That is quite impossible to know. It might be approximately that under certain standardized conditions but you cannot be sure, no matter what you're told by the manufacturer.

Help with RAW files and custom white balance.

ive long had this issue with RAW shooting and adobe photoshop and lightroom, my main subject is a saltwater reef aquarium that is lit by artificial lighting, i shoot canon and use the custom white balance setting to get everything looking proper and it works good.. to an extent.. if i shoot jpg the photos all turn out as shot, if i shoot RAW the white balance in adobe programs is totally messed up and you cant fix it.. if i use DPP by canon, its perfect and looks just as shot or just a a jpg would look.. my question is how can i get adobe lilightroom to render my RAW files correctly.
below are all 3 images, first one was converted and exported to jpg in canon DPP without any adjustments and is what the photo should look like, second has been exported from photoshop, and 3rd i added a link to the actual RAW file. why cant my lightroom interpret these properly?
heres a link to the actual RAW file
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5a39ctllwgrem7a/_MG_8971.CR2
this was a raw converted in canon dpp, and its what the aquarium looks like, and is what the photo should look like. just to note, any other editing or viewing program besides adobe products all render the image correctly.
this is what photoshop and lightroom do to my Raw files, theres no way to adjust anything to get even remotely close to correct..

The white-balance Temperature of this image as computed by the camera is way beyond the 50,000K upper limit as you can see when you open the file in LR or ACR, so Adobe cannot reach the As Shot WB temperature number and stops at 50,000K which is still too blue -- although EXIFtool says: Color Temp As Shot : 10900, so maybe Adobe's wildly high 50,000K number is based on a faulty camera profile that exaggerates blues:
However, using the Camera Standard makes things not nearly so garish blue, and it is possible to use Photoshop to neutralize things even more:
However, as you say, other raw converters do ok with this image despite the high WB temperature, so I think the Canon T3/1100D profile needs some work, but probably won't get it since it is not a high-end camera.
For example, here is the default conversion from LibRaw that is part of RawDigger, and in my opinion is an improvement on the camera rendering though perhaps lacks a bit of saturation:
As another example, here is RawTherapee's conversion, after I neutralized the auto-tone and color values it applies by default, and appears to be a bit too saturated but that could be easily adjusted:
I would agree that Adobe is doing something wrong with this camera in this lighting. A clue is the bright green color of the top-central coral which seems to be yellow in the non-Adobe renderings.

White balance, Export and shutterfly

I thought I was doing everything right with the holiday family shots: shot RAW, then corrected white balance as needed (often, cool them down slightly) in LR3.3 Develop. A test print (color managed by LR) on my home inkjet looked just like on-screen, color-temp wise. Then, to crank out a stack of 4x6s for family, I Exported jpgs (sharpened for glossy), and uploaded to Shutterfly (actually, Published them using a 3rd-party add-on). The resulting prints from the lab are MUCH warmer than the test prints or screen.
OK, ok, you get what you pay for. But...before I blame one vendor and start trying others: is this Shutterfly et al applying their own corrections? Or is there something I'm overlooking in the Export/Publish stage? TIFF vs JPGs?
This is NOT another "why aren't my prints like the screen" thread -- stuff is calibrated and my prints at home DO look like the on-screen image, thank you.
TIA

Short answer: click lift tool, click photo to transfer from, uncheck adjustments you don't want stamped, click photo to transfer to.
Longer answer:
1. Click the lift tool
2. Hover over a shot you want to copy anything from, and the cursor changes to an upward arrow. Click on the shot.
3. The cursor now changes to a down arrow when over any picture, indicating that Stamp is active. Uncheck any adjustments or other info you do NOT want to stamp, and click on the photo. Checked adjustments will be stamped.
Make sure you choose Add or Replace in the popup to add or replace the adjustments you're stamping (this setting is usually only relevant to metadata for me).
Mark

White Balance Why ?

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