Understanding White Balance

One of the most common questions I get asked as a photographer is about White Balance.  Usually the question is somewhere along the lines of "Hey Chels, can you fix this photo I took?"  Although you may not recognize the term White Balance, chances are that at one point or another you have noticed a white balance problem before.

Have you ever looked at a photo and thought, hmm... that picture just has too much of a blue (green/ yellow/ pink) tinge to it.  Maybe you took a photo indoors and the canned light made your picture look overly yellow?  Or you were outside and you notice that the skin tones in a picture look overly blueish, making the subjects look cold despite the fact it was a warm day?  Either way, it just doesn't look quite how it did when you saw the real thing with your own eyes.

Well, that my friends, is a white balance problem! Thanks to amazing advancements in technology, most digital cameras have great auto white balance settings.  They come with not only a basic auto white balance but more customizable settings too.  Unfortunately, technology sometimes falls short.

Take this photo of my favourite little bunny- Uh, I mean model.  For now, ignore the tool bar on the right side.  This is a screenshot of what this RAW photo looks like when I pull it up in photoshop for editing.
 

Nice, right?  Everything looks normal.  Not to yellow, not to blue... Just normal.

Here's another screenshot of the same photo.  The only thing that's different is the white balance settings, which is also sometimes known as the Temperature and Tint of a photo.  This time the picture looks much more yellow, almost too yellow.  If this photo is ever printed, the whites of my little munchkin's eyes are going to look downright jaundiced. 

When it comes to playing around with white balance you can customize it either in your camera before shooting or afterwards in a post processing program of some sort, like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom.  Keep in mind that if you opt for the latter, you will want to shoot in RAW format.

Some folks believe that you should get your photo as close to perfect when you're taking it so that you don't need to tweak photos in editing program...and some folks prefer the post processing route.  There is no right or wrong, just personal preference. 

White Balance via in Camera:
In order to edit your white balance on your camera before shooting, you will need to be in a mode that permits WB customization,  like manual, aperture priority, etc.  Pop your camera into manual and find your white balance setting.  (If you can't find it on your camera, try typing in "white balance for -insert camera model here-" into a web search engine and I'm sure someone has created a tutorial for your camera.) 

When you open the white balance settings you will see a list similar to this:
Auto
Incandescent
Fluorescent
Direct sunlight
Flash
Cloudy
Shade
(Choose colour temp...)

From here you simply select the setting that is most fitting for your situation.

So remember that photo from before?  If I didn't like the results that "auto" provided I might try selecting "cloudy" or "shady."  Or even "direct sunlight." 

If I were using a gray card or other white balancing tool, I would select the "choose colour temperature" setting.  (More on this in another post.)

Whatever setting you choose, a handy tip to remember is that your camera may try to retain your white balance settings that you last used, even after you've turned off your camera and forgotten all about the photos you've taken.  So it's always a good idea to get in the habit of putting your settings back into auto when you are done.

White Balance via Post Processing:
If you're happy with the white balance in a photo you've taken, obviously you wouldn't touch that aspect of your photo in editing. But for the sake of this discussion, we're going to assume I'm unhappy with the white balance.  Let's say that when I opened up my photo for the first time, I had one similar to that overly yellow screenshot.  The photo was taken outdoors, in the semi shade of the bushes on a sunny afternoon so it's easy to understand why my camera may have gotten confused as far as temperature or tint of the photo goes.

Up close on the right hand side, we can have a look at the white balance settings in editing a RAW photo.  If you're not comfortable with jumping into the deep end by playing with the temperature and tint dials, then the auto white balance presets from the drop down menu are a great way to get started.

In this case, I might try selecting the "daylight" preset since the picture was taken in the daylight.  If I don't like the way that looks I might try the "shade" or "auto" and see what sort of results I get.  If none of the presets seem quite right then that's when it's time to pick the lesser of the evils and then play with the temperature and tint dials!