Custom White Balance made simple! [Archive]

Jennifer

03-10-2006, 10:40 AM

Gosh, I feel like a traveling salesman here but I just have to share a SIMPLE TYPICAL SNAPSHOT and show how easy the WhiBal card works to improve the white balance of your photos. So, (Stacey!) Here is a sample!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v220/Jennison/Online/whibal.jpg

And I ran and took ONE shot for explanation purposes of a CWB in the studio. This is STRAIGHT out of the camera, no editing, just resized for web and look at that gorgeous skin color! Sorry about the tongue, but one shot and she was mid sentence but it's white balance I want to show. And the white on her sweater, IS WHITE! Not blue, or gray, or tinted funky but WHITE! I post process all my digital images and I would pump up the contrast on this and really make the colors pop. Skin is hard.... this was a very nice starting point so I don't have to worry about color cast or color corrections.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v220/Jennison/Online/whibalstudio.jpg

Stacey

03-10-2006, 11:15 AM

Oh WOW, Jennifer, that's a HUGE difference! That bottom picture is just stunning! Thanks for the example...looks like I'll have to add something else to my wishlist! LOL :D

DMurray407

03-10-2006, 12:20 PM

Jennifer, where did you come from? I'm going broke! Yesterday I bought a Lightsphere and now I'm seriously considering the Whibal. Your suggestions are great-thanks so much for sharing!

Jennifer

03-10-2006, 02:03 PM

Jennifer, where did you come from? I'm going broke! Yesterday I bought a Lightsphere and now I'm seriously considering the Whibal. Your suggestions are great-thanks so much for sharing!
Deb, I seriously tried NOT to share this as I come across looking like a salesman! (I at least was going to wait a bit to give my "salesman" posts some time between!) LOL :) but I was prompted to by another Mod who was interested. There are a few things that can make a BIG difference in your photography and Custom White Balance is #1 or #2 in importance so I thought I'd share one of the easiest. You can view his tutorials on his website that explain in depth how to use this AWESOME tool. http://www.rawworkflow.com/products/whibal/index.html

I had been looking at the expo disc and this whibal for about a year. I've been using a gray card from my camera store and I thought it was good... but not NOW that I've been using the whibal.... it's incredible. Too expensive but I guess it costs a lot to engineer, manufacture, and support the website so ya gotta pay it. And for me, who sells portraits, it's a good investment. My time IS money and this has cut my workflow down to a minimum.

Bayonne

03-10-2006, 02:17 PM

Wow your results with the whibal are incredible. An cost well worth its wait. The corrections I tend to have to make on color photos is often very time consuming when the whibal could reduce that time.

Thanks for the info, please keep any helpful tips coming. I am learning tons.

Audrey

03-11-2006, 12:45 AM

What a difference, Jennifer! I think your sales pitch is working, again! Only thing is, I couldn't find the price. From your comments I'm guessing it'll be out of my price range for awhile.
:)

Jennifer

03-11-2006, 12:55 AM

What a difference, Jennifer! I think your sales pitch is working, again! Only thing is, I couldn't find the price. From your comments I'm guessing it'll be out of my price range for awhile.
:)
Try this link: http://www.rawworkflow.com/products/whibal/index.html#Anchor-WhiBa-35784

I got the combo pack --pocket and studio.

andyapc

03-11-2006, 02:51 PM

Jennifer

03-11-2006, 03:00 PM

OK - I'm going to show my ignorance BIG TIME. Can anyone use this or do you need a special camera for it?

Is it just a card that you photograph?

I have a Kodax DX7590 and consistently have trouble with my white balance and it has no custom white balance setting. Would I be able to use this WhiBal thing?
That's one of the beautiful things about this card is YES! YOU CAN! ;) What YOU would do in your case is have the subject hold the WhiBal card and take a shot. Use THAT photo as a reference photo later in your post processing. Now as long as the lighting doesn't change you don't need any other WhiBal shots and you can use the original photo to use as a reference.

Edit: In photoshop, I would open my reference photo use the levels command- (Image>Adjustments>levels) and use my gray eyedropper to click on the medium gray card in the photograph. Before you shut the levels box, hit the 'save' button and save that level to your desktop. Then open your other photos you've taken and when you open levels, instead of clicking anywhere IN the photo, you hit the 'load' button and find that level on your desktop. Voila, white balanced!

andyapc

03-11-2006, 04:49 PM

I'm sorry - hope it's OK to ask a couple more questions? I'm trying to understand how this works (please bear with me - I am photography challenged, to say the least!)

I take a photo of the WhiBal before I take a real photo, right? But ... how do I do that if I'm constantly moving around to get pictures? Wouldn't my lighting be constantly changing (whether it's sunlight or indoors, etc.) because I'm not just standing in the same place all the time, so would I have to constantly be taking shots of the WhiBal card, depending on where I'm standing?

Sorry to sound so niave!!

Jennifer

03-11-2006, 05:05 PM

You can ask all the questions you'd like! But pretty much yes, if you're going t be shooting in the house, take a WhiBal. If you move outside, take a WhiBal. It you go BACK in the house, no need to take another WhiBal unless it's now dark in the house and you have all the lamps on, THEN you would need another WhiBal shot. This sounds complicted but if you were setting a Custom White Balance via the camera, you'd need to re-set that as well when you moved from indoors to out doors and vise versa. Even if you didn't set a Custom White Balance in the camera and used one of the Presets like you have on your Kodak you would have to change THAT too.... So, anytime the light changes, you need to change WB... how you choose do that is entirely up to you :) The reason for this is that light, all light, is a certain color temperature measured in Kelvin. Our human eyes adjust for that color shift, cameras do not so the need for filters on film cameras, daylight or tungsten balanced film, or white balance on a digital. HTH... ask more if you need to :)

Edit:I just went and asked my OH SO COOPERATIVE sons to help me with this.... inlaid is the Whibal shot. The cross section is my camera PURPOSELY set to the wrong WB (incandescent and I shot this Natual light) for illustration purposes (cause this has REALLY happened in real life!). So even bad WB boo-boo's can be fixed lickety-split!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v220/Jennison/Online/whibal2.jpg

karma

03-14-2006, 05:07 PM

Why are there four different colored cards? I thought you only had to shoot a sample of something that was 18% gray...

Jennifer

03-14-2006, 05:44 PM

Why are there four different colored cards? I thought you only had to shoot a sample of something that was 18% gray...
Somtimes you need to set a white point and a black point. Not for whitebalance though. The two grays are needed for jpg shooting (darker gray) or RAW shooting (light gray)

karma

03-14-2006, 06:09 PM

Is the light gray 18%(for RAW) like when we used film?

Jennifer

03-14-2006, 06:26 PM

It's not that it's 18% so much as (quoted from their website) "specturally neutral." And compared to my Gray card, this is much lighter in "color."

Bayonne

03-14-2006, 06:57 PM

Jennifer I love all your postings and your knowledge base is incredible and quite informative, thanks so much for all your info. Would you mind moving to MI and giving lessons? LOL

karma

03-14-2006, 06:59 PM

Well that's very interesting...I suppose I'll have to get me a set of those cards!

Over the weekend I was up in the mountains where there is still LOTS of snow. I changed the white balance of my D50 to PRE which is the setting where it will measure the white balance according to what you point it at. So I just pointed it at the snow and my photos turned out much better than they have previously. I've attached one here...http://www.pbase.com/karma2/image/57173717/medium.jpg

Jennifer

03-14-2006, 07:24 PM

Jennifer I love all your postings and your knowledge base is incredible and quite informative, thanks so much for all your info. Would you mind moving to MI and giving lessons? LOL
Thank you very much, I love what I do and I love photography! As far as MI goes, well, I have another cyber friend who just asked the same thing so maybe I'll have to give that some thought! :)

Jennifer

03-14-2006, 07:25 PM

Over the weekend I was up in the mountains where there is still LOTS of snow. I changed the white balance of my D50 to PRE which is the setting where it will measure the white balance according to what you point it at. So I just pointed it at the snow and my photos turned out much better than they have previously. Looks great Karma! CWB is something everyone should learn and DO! Can make such a difference :)

Jennifer

03-14-2006, 08:36 PM

Karma, thought you would find this interesting

From Michael T at WhiBal:

None of the cards in WhiBal represent 12-18%. The Dark gray card is closest, but since WhiBal was designed primarily as a White balance tool, the grays are optimized for White balance not exposure. Having said that the Dark gray card can be used with a spot meter and you can apply an offest to determine the proper exposure as if the card were 18%. One would do that anyway; that is calibrate their camera/meter 18% card to reality.

Also realize that digital systems, surprisingly are not linear when it comes to exposure. if you determine that 1/100 @ f8 is a proper exposure for a scene, and then switch lenses, that same exposure might not be right.

karma

03-14-2006, 08:59 PM

Jennifer

03-15-2006, 12:56 AM

hoo-boy! I don't know if I understand this. I guess it makes sense - sort of. I think this white balance/exposure issue is one of the hardest for me to understand. White balance is really totally different than the spot metering-right?
Yep, exposure is all about shutter speed and aperture and getting a correcly exposed image. White balance is balancing the color. Since you're coming from film it's the same as buying tungsten or daylight balanced film.... or putting on an 81A warming filter. Filters are how you change the color balance of film, white balance is the digital equivalant. No filters needed :) Well, except for UV and polarizing of course!

karma

03-15-2006, 08:45 AM

OK, sorry for the delay in responding. I just woke up.

When I had my film camera I bought a cool micro cleaning cloth that was the gray color used to meter from. I think thats where my confusion is coming from. I kept thinking I could use that to set the white balance! Duh! I think I finally have it. I am going to put my 50mm lens on today and experiment with the PRE white balance setting for everything and see what I can learn.:D

karma

03-15-2006, 12:17 PM

OK, so I put my 50mm lens on and left the WB to auto. First I shot the 'gray' cleaning cloth I mentioned. Well, I don't know how well that worked since I had to hold it in one hand and shoot with the other and it kept flopping around. Anyway, then I took a bunch of shots of the interior of my house, loaded it all into the computer and sampled the gray card and saved that setting. Then I opened one fo the shots of my dining room and applied the saved levels settings from the gray card and applied it to the shot. Here is the before and after. I don't see a BIG difference but a sutle one. I don't think my 'gray' cleaning cloth is going to work because it flops around and I get light hitting it at different angles all over and then which spot is the correct one to take a reading on in the software?? Oh well....back to the drawing board!
Here's the before:http://www.pbase.com/image/57297513.jpg

and here's the after:http://www.pbase.com/image/57297520.jpg

Jennifer

03-15-2006, 06:23 PM

Your auto white balance works pretty well. It's in trickier lighting conditons you'll really need WhiBal or CWB. If you'd had some household lights on and the outside you may have run into more of a problem. The corrected one looks a bit less yellow. Nice experiment!

For me, the studio lighting is always fooled by the auto white balance and a lot of times my flash just makes everything too blue. The nikon's are said to have a very good auto WB and you just showed that :)

karma

03-15-2006, 07:56 PM

Well the experiment did one thing - it showed me the gray cloth I have now won't cut it. I think I will order the Whibal cards. I watched his videos online this morning - very interesting and informative! There is a big discussion over at dpreview.com about this very issue and the guy who invented the Whibal was involved in the discussion-very cool!

Jennifer

03-15-2006, 08:16 PM

There is a big discussion over at dpreview.com about this very issue and the guy who invented the Whibal was involved in the discussion-very cool!
Yeah, he's Michael T and he always checks the WhiBal threads and offers insight and advice :)

tshirt

03-15-2006, 10:20 PM

Is the flash being used in all these WB shots? How does that play in?

Jennifer

03-15-2006, 10:30 PM

Is the flash being used in all these WB shots? How does that play in?
On the very first shot of the series of my DD, yes, I used a flash. I also shot the WhiBal card with the flash. On the second one of mine, my two sons, I used NO flash, just the naturl window light. Then, I shot the WhiBal in the same room light. I purposely had the white balance set to incandescent that's why it was so blue. Artificial house lamp light is very amber colored and on the color wheel, the opposite color to counter act the yellow is blue. So by choosing that White Balance I forced the photo blue for illustration purposes only.

karma

03-15-2006, 11:23 PM

OK, so here's my next question. What WB setting do you use on the camera to take the Whibal shot? Do I use the custom WB (PRE)? Would I leave it on PRE for the rest of the shooting in that setting so I can make a batch adjustment after downloading into the computer?

And finally, which RAW software do you use Jennifer? I can open these RAW shots in PS and PSE2 but is that one you would recommend or what would you recommend?

You have been so helpful to me with this, I really appreciate your patience!

Jennifer

03-15-2006, 11:56 PM

What WB setting do you use on the camera to take the Whibal shot?
Karma: Firstly, I am enjoying out "time" together here! Lots of fun sharing going on...

It doesn't matter AT ALL what white balance you set your camera to (IF you're going to WhiBal them later!!) it's that they're taken in the same LIGHT. That was the whole purpose of that horrid shot with my two boys. The wrong... WAY wrong color balance STILL was fixed to perfection with the WhiBal. So, pretty much I only switch between Auto (for general snapshots) and I ALWAYS, ALWAYS do a Custom White Balance for studio work and for clients because I have sooooo many to wade through it just helps take one step out of my workflow. That MIGHT change now with the whiBal because I can batch 'em. We'll see... hard to switch a habit.
And finally, which RAW software do you use
I much prefer Nikon Capture to Adobe. It's like with printers (and this is according to ME so take it for what it's worth!) but canon printers work best with canon paper, HP with HP, Epson with Epson etc.... I feel my color and sharpness is just better with Nikon Capture. I then right click and do "send to Adobe..." and finish processing there.... cropping, USM, etc.

Nikon just partnered with Nik software and their new RAW convesion tool is promised to be something spectacular! I read the brochure and am excited to see it in action.

karma

03-16-2006, 08:44 AM

okieinalaska

03-17-2006, 08:47 PM

Love the pics you too, whibal really does work! I have heard great things about nikon capture and it's not to bad a price. $99

I have paint shop pro and elements right now. Will those open raw images? You can use the whilbal for raw or jpeg though right?
Amy in Alaska

okieinalaska

03-17-2006, 08:51 PM

Jennifer

03-17-2006, 10:13 PM

Thanks again, this makes good sense. I don't have Nikon Capture I'll have to look into it. Nikon View came with my camera - does it have the tools to adjust the WB and then do a batch conversion do you know? I couldn't see anything like that but will keep digging.
Nikon capture trial version should be on your CD. If not, you can download the same 30-day trial directly from Nikon's website. I installed the trial (Not for converting RAW images... WAS NOT GOING TO GET INTO THAT STUFF! LOL Boy was I a dork... LOVE RAW!) but to install a custom curve (which you can only do through Nikon Capture) While I was at it I thought i'd give that RAW stuff a whirl and WOW!!!! What I learned! I don't know if the D50 takes custom curves, I'd have to research that a bit, but if so, give that a try! Nikon will be introducing it's new Nikon Capture in a few months with it's new joint venture with NIK and it'll be a whole lot bigger and better than capture is now. Downlad it and play! But I don't think I'd purchase the license till you find out if they let you upgrade within a certain period of time of purchase or that'd be a waste of $100.

Jennifer

03-17-2006, 10:16 PM

I have paint shop pro and elements right now. Will those open raw images? You can use the whilbal for raw or jpeg though right?
Amy in Alaska
I have no idea at all about PSP opening RAW, my gut says no but I could be wrong... I'll go to Corel's website and research that. Elements I'm almost positive won't open RAW, the full PS version does though.

Gosh, you guys ask GREAT questions... got me studying! LOL

Jennifer

03-17-2006, 10:17 PM

Jennifer,
not to sidetrack your thread on the whibal, but how did you get your start in photography and what kind of training or background do you have in it? I have always loved photographing children and would some day like to have a portrait studio. Of course I also love cake decorating and want to have my own cake shop, LOL. Oh, so little time, so many loves.... : )

Amy in Alaska
Well, you can read my bio here on DSP if you'd like to know more! :) I also run a studio out of my home and do location work for clients.
http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com/company/designers/jenniferhutchison.shtml

tape

03-18-2006, 07:40 AM

I have no idea at all about PSP opening RAW, my gut says no but I could be wrong...
PSP 9 and X will open some varieties of RAW (X more than 9), but it seems that the more experienced photographers among PSP users prefer to use a free program called RawShooter Essentials for opening and preprocessing their RAW files. My camera doesn't do RAW so I have no personal experience.

http://support.corel.com/scripts/rightnow.cfg/php.exe/enduser/std_adp.php?&p_faqid=757287
http://support.corel.com/scripts/rightnow.cfg/php.exe/enduser/std_adp.php?&p_faqid=758590

Jennifer

03-18-2006, 10:27 AM

PSP 9 and X will open some varieties of RAW (X more than 9), but it seems that the more experienced photographers among PSP users prefer to use a free program called RawShooter Essentials for opening and preprocessing their RAW files. My camera doesn't do RAW so I have no personal experience.

http://support.corel.com/scripts/rightnow.cfg/php.exe/enduser/std_adp.php?&p_faqid=757287
http://support.corel.com/scripts/rightnow.cfg/php.exe/enduser/std_adp.php?&p_faqid=758590
Ya beat me to it! Thanks for posting this, what a great community we belong to here at DSP!

okieinalaska

03-18-2006, 01:14 PM

Jennifer and Tanja, thanks so much for the info. Now if my camera would arrive so I could put all this to practical use! : )

Jennifer I enjoyed your bio and didn't realize you are practically a neighbor in Seattle. (well kind of, Alaska is so big and we go to Seattle for everything it seems like it, LOL) I used to live there back in 1991 for a few months, my hubby was stationed on the ice breaker Polar Star.