Whites Should be Whites!

Here is a thought or photography tip to some starting out.

It is always good to set the proper or “near-right” white balance at RAW capture. This is accomplished via using a Gretag McBeth Color Checker card or those “Grey Cards” you can purchase at photography retailers.

When you don’t have them, try to find something “grey” or neutral in the same lighting situation and/or distance as your subject.

When I was shooting Chit-Chit, I did not want to go back and get my color checker card. So, I looked for something neutral in the vicinity and similar lighting as Chit-Chit. I found these rubber mats for the dog house.

Here is screen shot of the original RAW capture and the white balance corrected. I also corrected and enhanced the contrast to give that initial, “Oomph!”

If you’re using any RAW converter software, call up your “white balance tool” and try to find RGB areas that are near equal in value on the grey/”neutral” reference image. For my reference image, I got 7750K with Tint = 7. I applied those settings over and you can see the before and after. It made a HUGE difference in image perception and mood.

IMPORTANT!

Leo Lam: May I add a suggestion? “The monitor must be calibrated for this method to work, otherwise, make sure you use a grey card (like the Gretag Macbeth or WhiBal) for white balance”. Without calibration, any “fine tuning” at the end is futile…

If there isn’t any “grey” or neutral objects in the scene, Chit-Chit has some grey patches of fur that could be used as starting guide and later fine-tune in photoshop. The purpose of white balancing is showing to people that what’s naturally “white” appears as white. If you look in the uncorrected image, Chit-Chit’s white stripe on her chest appeared grey.

You can play with the white balance setting to your heart’s content in RAW, but I like to be technical and scientific. Every shoot I do has some sort of neutral grey or reference image.

HAPPY WHITE-BALANCING!