Major white balance issue.

[Anbesol]

One of my most common mistakes I make, which is particularly problematic considering I primarily shoot JPEG, is adjusting white balance, then forgetting to readjust in a different scene. I had this problem yesterday, got a shot I really like, then forgot my WB was set to 2700k when it should have been some 9000k. This is the result, I tried a lot of adjustments, levels, color balance, and photo filter. By the time I got it close to marginally acceptable, I had obliterated his white t-shirt, and had to layer mask a BW shirt to produce accurate whites. This is the result, which to me is acceptable but not good. What else could I have done? I also included a later shot with proper white balance for tonal comparison.


Please feel free to edit yourself and repost your technique.

[Anbesol]

I also layer masked the blue hue on his pants, so I must have upped a previous edit..

Anyway, I'm beginning to think this here is the best, and only way to completely eradicate the white balance issue.

Thoughts on the B/W?

[trout bum]

I leave my white balance set on auto after a rather frusturating photo outing atop a winter mountain with a series of tungsten-tainted landscape shots.

[ksbryan0]

The b/w doesn't look bad, but I feel the vignetting crowds the kids a little. Did you add the vignette, or was it native? I don't notice it so much in the color shots. After too many shots with the wrong WB setting, I finally made the switch to shooting only RAW and haven't messed up the WB since!

[Greg McCary]

I would open a selective color layer and also try a hue adjustment. Maybe the hue adjustment first.

[n8]

I'd opt for leaving your camera on auto wb, or shooting in raw.

[Anbesol]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

I can't trust my cameras auto white balance indoors. I also have a very fast and efficient jpeg workflow, which I think off balances (at least for me) the practical benefits of raw. Its rare that I ever look at an image and say 'damn, wish I shot it raw', this of course is one of those times.

Greg - what do you mean by selective color layer?

I intend to print this 8x10, and I think this is as close as I'm going to get, the only thing that bothers me in it is all the adjustments obliterated the detail on his shirt, its sort of a blotchy mess now.

[Greg McCary]

Just like opening a channel mixer or hue/saturation layer you can open a selective color layer and adjust all of the colors.

[crystalyoung]

I worked with it a little bit but didn't get anything better. But for what it's worth the character of the picture far outweighs any white balance problem ;) Those are some cute kiddos!

[Anbesol]

Thanks, the folks all love it too, it really captures their personalities quite well. Which is why I'm bothering trying to fix it.

Greg - WOW! I've never used selective color like that, thanks for pointing it out to me. I've only ever used it to fill solids.

[EOSThree]

I understand the need for a fast efficient workflow, but you can shoot RAW and still have this. Shoot RAW+L jpg. Simple. Storage is cheap. Then you can throw away all of the those negatives(stupid IMO)and keep the jpgs, or better yet store it all and go back and find little gems that you may want to tweak on later. Then, if you have the occasional mess like above, you'll have the latitude to fix it.

On not trusting AWB indoors: in any case, it would have been a lot closer than this...

[daq7]

First shot is really nice. Shoot in raw. Don't think about WB.

[GB1]

Ha, I'd say that the blue image has an issue!

I was going to ask 'Why not leave it on Auto WB, is it not accurate?' but I see you have had problems with it. I shoot Auto 99.5% of the time and luckily it's fine. Maybe it's nearing time to upgrade your camera to one that has a more advanced WB algorithm.

Or, of course, try to remember to set it. But I am not sure if I would like to go through the manual process of setting that all the time - seems tiring, and would distract from the other aspects of picture taking.

I DO like the black and white ! I think it's the best of the bunch.

When correcting, lean towards erring on the side of warmth with people. That's the best advice I could offer.

G

[Anbesol]

Considering I shoot jpeg, thats why I set the white balance, of course if I shot raw, I'd shoot auto white balance 100% of the time. But getting pinpoint white balance accuracy is important when I shoot jpeg only. Outdoors, AWB works fine, but I dont want any even marginal error indoors. I dont think thats unreasonable or impractical either. I also don't think there is a Camera that gets a good white balance on auto indoors, incadescent/tungsten/flourescent, especially when there is no white in the scene. It also gives me consistency, so its not 2700k one shot, and 3500k the next.