Color Question

[emiles]

How can I get the yellowish tint off of the photo's I take? Is this just the color light or is there something I can do to make them more colorful. Picture below is what I am talking about. Not the greatest, but it shows what it shows the tint.

[EOSThree]

That's white balance. The camera doesn't know what kind of light you photographed in, so it guesses. There used to be different film types for different kinds of light. Anyway a custom white balance before you shoot will fix this problem, or you can fix it in post processing. It's better to shoot in RAW if you're going to fix it in post processing, that way the image isn't degraded by the processing.

anyway here you go:

[emiles]

Just got PAINT.net so just starting to learn how to use that. So, white balance. This brings us to my next question, how do you shoot in RAW? Is it a camera setting? or is it something else?

[ksbryan0]

Yep, go into your camera menu to the image quality folder and you can select RAW or RAW + JPEG.

[Anbesol]

I personally prefer JPEG over raw for its practical convenience (most commonly, 95% of the time plus). I only ever shoot raw for a job which requires a very large print, or if I specifically want something with smooth, soft and subtle tonal graduations. Anyway, point being, shooting raw strictly for the convenience of white balance is a bit silly in my mind, as it is simple enough to - before shooting, custom set your white balance. Simply press your white balance button, scroll to 'custom', then shoot a solid white object under the light you are shooting in, could be as simple as a white piece of paper, or a white sign or shirt, you could have used her shirt, actually. This way, you don't have to add the cumbersome task of a raw work flow for the singular purpose of adjusting color temperature.

[EOSThree]

I personally prefer JPEG over raw for its practical convenience (most commonly, 95% of the time plus). I only ever shoot raw for a job which requires a very large print, or if I specifically want something with smooth, soft and subtle tonal graduations. Anyway, point being, shooting raw strictly for the convenience of white balance is a bit silly in my mind, as it is simple enough to - before shooting, custom set your white balance. Simply press your white balance button, scroll to 'custom', then shoot a solid white object under the light you are shooting in, could be as simple as a white piece of paper, or a white sign or shirt, you could have used her shirt, actually. This way, you don't have to add the cumbersome task of a raw work flow for the singular purpose of adjusting color temperature.

Please explain to me this cumbersome work flow. It's no more difficult to convert a properly exposed RAW file than it is to set a custom white balance. Basically a button press in your RAW converter.

But on the plus side, if you screw it up, (I remember a post by you with an extremely cold WB that was basically unrecoverable) with RAW, you can ALWAYS recover it with no information loss. The only downside to RAW is storage space. If you are short on space then JPEG buys you something, but storage is cheap. There is no reason to not shoot RAW, and if you want the "quick" workflow, shoot RAW+L Fine JPEG, then you have the best of both worlds.

[emiles]

Wow! I never realized how much difference playing with the white balance could be. Just took some pictures and they are vastly different, just from messing with that. Thanks everyone for showing me that.

[Anbesol]

Emiles - Yeah! The blue to orange hues can get kinda crazy, try white balance under a black light!

EOS - It is cumbersome, by A) producing a significantly larger file size, which takes longer to open and make adjustments too, this difference is mitigated with faster computers though, and varies depending on resolution. Also, B) requires opening each file through your raw converter, then processing in photoshop, or, opening through photoshops raw conversion. adding a whole extra process to the mix. And C) If you want to actually utilize the benefits of RAW's tonal width, which to me is the primary biggest benefit of raw, this requires working in a 16 bit work flow instead of an 8 bit, even in faster computers, once you start adding filters, crops, layers, etc etc, this adds an excessive amount of time and processing to your computing, as well as adding to the amount of stored memory in your RAM. Now, maybe you have several terabytes HD space and a quad core with 16gb of low latency memory, subsequently these differences will mean a lot less to you, but they are still present no less.

Yes, I remember that shot as well, it was a mistake I made, I set a custom white balance for an indoor scene, then went outdoors and forgot to change it back. And yes, had I shot it in raw, it would not have been a problem at all.

I do agree with you that, if shooting raw, shooting raw+jpeg is ideal./

I just want to discourage the notion that shooting raw is the singularly best option to achieving accurate white balance. I don't choose that as my usual option for maintaining white balance, and yes - the occasional mistake pops up like the one mentioned. But it is the compromise I make for practicality. Raw certainly is one way of maintaining good, consistent white balance - its idiot proof even, I just wanted to propose to the OP another way of getting accurate white balance. And even in RAW, I would still custom set white balance, rather than fiddle with it on each photo in raw conversion. The "one button press" white balance in conversion, I have never found nearly as reliable or accurate as the one button white balance custom set option in the camera.

[EOSThree]

So basically you don't keep your negatives because your computer isn't fast/large enough. The very best quality is always important to me, and worth the computer upgrade. The few times I have shot in JPEG, I have been upset because my workflow was disrupted. Smooth gradients, 16 bit workflow, larger tonal range, increased dynamic range, lossless workflow, etc. all perfect arguments for using RAW.

I have a MBP 2.5 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB Ram, 500 GB 7500RPM HD - 3 year old technology. I have no problem opening or editing RAW files with this computer. I use LR, NIK complete collection, Photomatix, and PSe to edit my photographs. I have never had any problem with files, I shoot with a 12mp, 16mp, and 18mp camera body. I have shot RAW from the day I started with digital, the only change from that is that I let LR convert to DNG on import. And BTW Raw with LR is easy, it's assumed the file is RAW, when you export the file you choose how to export the file, be it JPEG, TIFF, GIF, etc.

You are right that WB alone is a poor reason to shoot in RAW, but their are so many more benefits that far outweigh the negatives, to not be shooting RAW. Maybe because I've shot in RAW from the beginning, I've always made the provision to have the space needed, and the time has never been a factor for me.

I put my card in the reader and walk away to do something else. When I return my photos are downloaded in the best quality they possibly can be and I can go about the work of culling and editing the ones worth editing. Almost any editor has provisions for working in RAW and even Picasa (free) has RAW workflow now. I don't find it cumbersome or inconvenient for the benefits.

[Canuck935]

I started in the JPEG camp myself. Did a little experimenting with RAW+JPEG. Then Lightroom came along and since then it's been all RAW all the time for me. The magic of Lightroom is that there doesn't need to be the extra step of a RAW converter. Just import and go. Lightroom doesn't care what format your photo's are in. If it weren't for Lightroom I'd still be shooting JPEG.

[Greg McCary]

I will shoot Jpeg when I am going to shoot a ton of pictures, birthday parties ect. I don't like editing that many shoots. But for landscape stuff I shoot RAW. I usually know pretty much what I want out of a landscape shot and don't take very many pictures.

[EOSThree]

I guess I'm a little surprised. I won't risk shooting in JPEG. I can't compromise the possible finished product. I just can't feel right unless I've given the photograph every possible chance of succeeding, RAW gives the photograph and photographer every possible chance of succeeding. I can't understand why anyone wouldn't want that for their photography. For me it was never even a choice.

Maybe I feel there really isn't an extra step here because I started in film, took college level film photography, dabbled in graphic arts, darkroom, etc. I had to shoot a roll of film, develop the film, enlarge the negative, dodge, burn, and print via chemicals. This new $h!t's easy compared to that. RAW workflow...cake.

I started in digital right from the beginning (Canon S-30, 2003) shooting in RAW. I started using Canon's RAW converter, then soon after switched to Breeze Browser which had a simplified workflow similar to LR. For heavy hitting I exported to Paint Shop Pro for editing. I switched to mac and lost Breeze Browser, but learned to use LR in a similar manner. I am a digital darkroom idiot, I can barely use layers. But RAW is something I've always used, I've never considered working any other way.

For P&S birthday parties and the such, I just batch convert without any real editing, but if I've captured a winner accidentally, I have the ability to process that winner to the full capability of my equipment. With JPEG, you've robbed yourself of even having the chance of giving that photograph complete success.

[MarcusK]

Well to first answer the question of white balance there are basically two ways, either in-camera fixing or during post-processing.

It is important to understand the many ways you can set the white balance in-camera, and they do help a lot... specially if you don't do post processing or minimal post. So I suggest you read up your camera's manual to find out how you can set the WB.

During post, it pretty much depends on the software of choice, but they should all be the same. And this is where the discussion of RAW v/s JPG comes into play.

Much like it used to be back in the day of film, you are better off always trying to get the best possible photo from the camera... it is even more critical nowadays with digital. The less you need to post process, the more information you get to keep in the photo. Which is why many people prefer to shoot RAW since it does not compress or loose any information... it takes it as is.

However, and this is something worth knowing before you make a choice, if you are not going to print your files, then you will not know the difference. On screen, you can't tell which image was shot JPG and which was shot RAW unless the final result is a small crop of the original.

To put it simply, RAW offers you many more possibilities to work with your files, at the cost of spending time later on with the images. In my personal opinion, it is a very small price to pay... If you want to allow yourself some leeway while shooting go RAW.

Hope this helps

[CaraRose]

I've started shooting raw+jpeg, but frankly, I prefer working with the jpegs and don't do much other than archive my raw files. It's nice to be able to have the raw file if needed though.