White Balance

White Balance

Setting white balance is a fundamental part of taking good pictures. If it sounds exactly like the kind of thing you'd rather avoid as a fan of the simplicity of digital photography - think again!

There's no need for a physics lesson to begin gettings to grips with it. The tiny amount of knowledge required for understanding white balance brings enormous benefits for your photography.


What Is White Balance and Why Is It Important?

Essentially, because the camera does not interpret light in the same way as the human eye, it's important to let it know how much weight you wish to give to the reds, greens and blues in an image . This has a big impact on the neutral areas too, like white/grey overcast skies - hence 'white balance'.

So setting white balance has a major impact on the character of your photos. The more red there is in the light, the 'warmer' it is, and the more blue the 'cooler'. By themselves, cameras often misjudge this 'colour temperature' and produce images that are irritatingly different from the original subject.

When photographing something that is predominantly red in colour for instance, the camera may well interpret this as a warm light source and compensate by throwing a blue 'colour cast' over the whole image. "Not good."

Understanding white balance allows you to manually fine tune the colour temperature and produce accurate images every time. You may also wish to emphasise the blues or reds in a given picture by deliberately choosing an 'inaccurate' camera white balance setting.

  Cooler Colour Temperature.                                              Warmer Colour Temperature. 

Using The Pre-Set Camera White Balance Options and Follow the heard. 

This method for setting white balance is quick, easy and effective when taking pictures in JPEG mode. Digital cameras have made things really easy by providing a list of white balance options in the menus that correspond to common lighting situations, like 'cloudy', 'daylight' and 'shade', with a balance of colours appropriate to those scenarios.

Simply choose the option in your digital camera settings that corresponds to the conditions you are shooting in, and off you go! This is a fairly accurate method of controlling colour temperature. The full list of pre-set options typically includes - beginning with the warmest / reddest and moving to the coolest / bluest.

                             

Shade.

                          

Balances the temperature of shots taken in the shade by adding a warm tone.

Cloudy.

For accurate white balance when shooting under overcast skies. The correct setting for the light in these photos.

Flash.

Compensates accurately for the specific tone a flash throws on to the picture.

Daylight.

This camera white balance setting is suitable for most outdoor photography. It is often even accurate in cloudy conditions.

Fluorescent.

Harsh fluorescent light makes manual control of the white balance essential.

Tungsten.

Much indoor photography relies on this pre-set white balance option. Adding a strong blue tone compensates for a tungsten light source.

Unleash the RAW power! Set the white balance after the shot.

Photography is very often about opportunism. Digital photography makes this a whole lot easier. Even selecting white balance from the pre-set options on your digital camera settings is no big deal.

But what if you're shooting in broad daylight and suddenly notice a great picture opportunity in a shaded area? If you stop to adjust the white balance the moment will have passed - there goes another one!

Imagine how great it would be if you could just seize the instant, snap away, and deal with all the technical details after the event. You can! Using a Raw file format makes it possible 

A Raw image contains only the basic, raw information that was recorded the moment a picture was taken. Whilst JPEG's are given a set of little 'in-camera' adjustments to improve their quality - including applying the white balance - Raw photos remain 'unfinished' until they have been fine tuned in Photoshop (or other software).

Opening your Raw image in Photoshop will bring up the 'Camera Raw dialogue box'. Setting white balance here involves moving the Temperature and Tint sliders across to the desired positions.

Image Courtesy Pranay Desai.

Alternatively, select the white balance tool above the image preview - it looks like a pipette - and click on a neutral gray area of your photo to set an accurate white balance.