White Balance Problem

Last Sunday I shot photos at a 50th anniversary celebration. The party was held in a room with one limestone wall (yellow-orange), a metal ceiling painted shiny gold, and a third wall painted dark red / maroon. To my frustration, my test shots came out very orange-looking. I went into my D90 white balance grid, and moved the selector more toward light blue, and re-shot. This helped, but I still had to do a lot of manipulation in Photoshop Elements 10 to get them somewhat close to natural. What should I have done to set my white balance? Use a black, white, gray target card to set a custom white balance? Just use a gray card to set white balance? If that is the best option, how do you set a custom white balance? Come to think of it, I guess I should have tried some of the presets (cloudy, shade, incandescent, flourescent, etc) and see if I could get close using one of them. I spent far too much time fiddling with my camera and not shooting photos. I do not want to make this mistake again. Suggestions?

Read page 100 in your user manual. Explains setting a custom white balance.

White balance can be adjusted on the PC if you shoot RAW.

Before you start take a photo of a white piece of paper or a photo gray card. That way you can do an quick adjustment from the values you get of the gray card or the white paper, for all the photos you did take in that area.

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Originally Posted by wfooshee

White balance can be adjusted on the PC if you shoot RAW.

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True, but white balance doesn't needed to be adjusted in PP if you do a custom WB prior to shooting. It can also be adjusted in .jpg just not as easily.

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Originally Posted by freygr

Before you start take a photo of a white piece of paper or a photo gray card. That way you can do an quick adjustment from the values you get of the gray card or the white paper, for all the photos you did take in that area.

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Problem with white paper is that to the human eye it looks white. Often what we perceive as white isn't really white. A gray card or white card/target would be the better option.

Just got back from Baker Photo in Yukon, OK. Bought one of their gray cards, and they showed me how to set the white balance using it. I had read the directions, but was not fully understanding the process. Oh well, the guy that helped me had to go to the Nikon website to determine the procedure also. Thanks to everyone for your replies.