White balance issues, any ideas?

Hi Everyone

I am having an issue with my digital camera shots, I was hoping for some advice.

I need to take picture of fabrics for a shirt website. I am using a Canon G2 on a small tripod (about 20 inches from the fabric) with an Ott-lite for lighting. The images are coming out well, but the color does not quite match. The color of the fabric is more of a light purple, while the images are coming out bluish.

I tried using custom white balance, but cannot seem to fix the problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Roy

Hi Roy, try this link: http://forums.pcphotoreview.com/showthread.php?t=2973

Ray

Is it the image on a screen that doesn't match, or a print? Getting WB in the ballpark is easy (auto WB), close isn't too much harder (custom WB) but that last little bit is a lot of work.

Is your monitor calibrated? I saw a big improvement when I started using Monaco Optix for monitor calibration, but my prints still aren't 100%. I've gotta figure out how to do profiles for the Fuji Frontier that I have my prints done on...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by royli57

Hi Everyone

I am having an issue with my digital camera shots, I was hoping for some advice.

I need to take picture of fabrics for a shirt website. I am using a Canon G2 on a small tripod (about 20 inches from the fabric) with an Ott-lite for lighting. The images are coming out well, but the color does not quite match. The color of the fabric is more of a light purple, while the images are coming out bluish.

I tried using custom white balance, but cannot seem to fix the problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Roy

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Hiya. Don't assume it's the camera capturing the color wrong. It could very well be post capture where your problem is occuring. There are many things that could go wrong including not having a calibrated monitor, using wrong color profiles and color management settings, converting the image incorrectly if shooting raw, possibly more I can't think of.

Thanks for all of the informatin - I suppose I should be more specific.

I tried to use both the Canon G2 and a Sony Cybershot for taking the pictures. When I look at the fabrics through the LCD, I can see that the color is off. In both of the LCD screens, the purple shows up as blue, and the white is not exactly white but more of a gray (same results with custom white balance and outdoors in natural light).

So I am not really sure what the problem could be, unless it is that the camera is not physically capable of capturing true color.

What do you guys think?

Roy

Quote:

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Originally Posted by royli57

Thanks for all of the informatin - I suppose I should be more specific.

I tried to use both the Canon G2 and a Sony Cybershot for taking the pictures. When I look at the fabrics through the LCD, I can see that the color is off. In both of the LCD screens, the purple shows up as blue, and the white is not exactly white but more of a gray (same results with custom white balance and outdoors in natural light).

So I am not really sure what the problem could be, unless it is that the camera is not physically capable of capturing true color.

What do you guys think?

Roy

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The G2 is perfectly capable of capturing the color of the shirt. I hate the LCD screens because that screen is not calibrated to your monitor. What I do for critical color work is shoot the subject and make sure your exposure is correct. Then take that setting and shoot a grey card, or even better, a card that has perfect white, grey, and black.

In your first shot with the card, set the grey point in levels or curves, and save that setting. Apply that setting for all shots that have the same lighting.

Digital cameras have so many interfaces that it's nearly impossible to have true representation from the LCD to the Print.

Loren