copying white balance from a pre-existing photograph

After 10 years of using a Nikon D300 camera with Auto white balance, I'm now starting to pay more attention to White Balance. I bought a WhiBal Studio card (3.5" x 6"). For post-processing, I use Corel PaintShop Pro X8. I would consider Corel AfterShot Pro 3, Nikon routines Capture NX-D, ViewNX-I, View NX 2 and Capture NX-D. I have Nikon NEF Codec. I haven’t got the hang of these Nikon routines. For example, how do I crop?

 

I avoid Adobe products because of the cost and the subscription model.

 

I’m successful with using Direct Measurement to make the adjustment with the camera as I take the pictures. I light the grey card, measure it, and select the measurement.

 

However, I have some questions about copying white balance from a pre-existing reference photo. That white balance coupling can be done with the camera or with the post-processing software.

 

When I take the reference picture of the grey card, doesn’t that picture already have white balance adjustments? It seems that using it as a reference would introduce two cumulative adjustments. So how do I take the reference picture of the grey card?

 

Another way to use the reference picture is to determine its color temperature and enter that as data. That, too, can be done with the camera or with post-processing software. But how do I determine the color temperature? Does one number, the color temperature, fully describe the white balance? How do I find that number?

 

Dan

WB is a range of suggested colors. IOW, you could ask for CCT 5500K in one raw product vs. another with the same raw data and get different results visually. A camera isn't the ideal 'tool' for 'measuring' white balance by a long shot. A Spectrophotometer with supported software, recording spectral data would be. But the values it reported could very likely be quite different than a camera as well as other raw converters. So ignore the numbers per se, work with a calibrated display and produce a WB that is pleasing to you in whatever product you're using.

http://digitaldog.net/files/22Thecolorofwhite.pdf

You can get three Nikon D5's for the cost of a single spectrophotometer! A calibrated monitor is also off my list.

 

I understand that "A camera isn't the ideal 'tool' for 'measuring' white balance by a long shot." Amazing that the WB process works as well as it does.

 

So, setting WB by use of color temperature is very inaccurate. My Nikon D300 provides for setting WB by: Auto, direct sunlight, Shade, Incandescent, Fluorescent (7 types), Flash, color temperature, preset manual, and cloudy. Of these, preset manual is the most accurate.

 

As a side note to the frequent observation that human eyes can readily adapt to changes in white balance, bees can distinguish shades of white 100x finer than humans can. They have to so that they can get the right flower. Their eyes are designed that way. In exchange for that talent, they can't identify shapes very well.

 

Still, is there any way to get even a rough idea of the color temperature? That, and an eyedropper on a gray in a picture that you like are the only ways to adjust WB in PaintShop Pro.

You can get three Nikon D5's for the cost of a single spectrophotometer!

You can get a Spectrophotometer that can do this task for under $500. How much does a D5 cost?

And free software that supports it:

illumread

Amazing that the WB process works as well as it does.

Yeah, moving sliders with names like Tint/temp to visually alter the image, or an eyedropper that ensures R=G=B isn't a big deal. Doesn't change the facts about what WB really is, how it's measured etc. The numbers are moot, the are all over the map (OK, all over the lines of correlated color temp ;) )

As a side note to the frequent observation that human eyes can readily adapt to changes in white balance, bees can distinguish shades of white 100x finer than humans can.

Which is why the numbers, that represent a range of possible colors, colors are a perceptual phenomena of, in this conversation humans, doesn't require the user to deal with numbers. But rather how individual color pixels that are triplets of numbers, appear in context. An image. Which is why what's key is a calibrated and profiled display and a user who knows what pleasing color, not WB numbers they desire.

Still, is there any way to get even a rough idea of the color temperature? That, and an eyedropper on a gray in a picture that you like are the only ways to adjust WB in PaintShop Pro.

Define rough. I provided an article that shows the possible colors that can all correlate to one set of values. You see the line running from e to f on the spectrum locus in the URL? ANY of those colors can be defined numerically as 5000K. Useful? I don't see it that way.

"When I take the reference picture of the grey card, doesn’t that picture already have white balance adjustments?"

 

- If you shoot RAW, you can make the white balance anything you like in post (within reason).

 

JPEGs? Not so much; not without risking posterisation. JPEGs already have a white balance baked in, which means discarding data to change anything. OTOH, RAW is, or should be, data straight from the photosites, and so is as flexible as any white balance control you have on the camera... and maybe then some.

 

I'm not really getting the issue here. A white balance card can be used in two ways. Probably the best way is to use it to set a custom WB in the camera before shooting.

The other, more cumbersome IMO, way is to stick the card in the picture and then poke it with the grey-balance eyedropper in post. (Which will automatically indicate the Kelvin temperature in any decent RAW editor)

 

But if you don't shoot RAW in the first place, the second option is definitely going to be limited in how much the WB can be varied.

Edited October 22, 2018 by rodeo_joe|1

bees can distinguish shades of white 100x finer than humans can.

 

- But how did the bees fill out the questionnaire?

digitaldog: You can get a Spectrophotometer that can do this task for under $500. How much does a D5 cost?

 

kaliuzhkin: Google search on spectrophotometer, first one was $18,000. D5 is about $5,000.

 

kaliuzhkin said: ↑

Still, is there any way to get even a rough idea of the color temperature? That, and an eyedropper on a gray in a picture that you like are the only ways to adjust WB in PaintShop Pro.

 

digitaldog: Define rough.

 

kaliuzhkin: About the same accuracy that you would get with the D300 WB set to Auto, direct sunlight, Shade, Incandescent, Fluorescent, flash, or cloudy.

 

rodeo_joe|1: - If you shoot RAW, you can make the white balance anything you like in post (within reason).

 

JPEGs? Not so much; not without risking posterisation. JPEGs already have a white balance baked in, which means discarding data to change anything. OTOH, RAW is, or should be, data straight from the photosites, and so is as flexible as any white balance control you have on the camera... and maybe then some.

 

kaliuzhkin: I shoot NEF (RAW) + JPEG. However, the only postprocessor I use is PaintShop Pro and that doesn't handle NEF very well. I haven't found any NEF editors that I like.

 

I do a lot of tabletop photography to illustrate items I list on eBay. The main features I use are crop and brightness adjustment. I find that my pictures take very similar adjustments: high contrast. That's why I'm looking at WB. Anyway, I don't do much else in postprocessing.

 

The Nikon routines handle NEF but don't readily crop. I might give Aftershot a try.

 

rodeo_joe|1: I'm not really getting the issue here.

kaliuzhkin: That's because I'm floundering around.

 

What I want to explore is taking a picture of the grey card and using it as a reference. You can do that on the D300, but the reference picture has to be on the same memory card. In PSP, you use an eyedropper, but can you use a reference grey from another picture? Are the results even satisfactory?

digitaldog: You can get a Spectrophotometer that can do this task for under $500. How much does a D5 cost?

kaliuzhkin: Google search on spectrophotometer, first one was $18,000. 5D is about $5,000.

$459:

X-Rite ColorMunki Photo Color Management Solution CMUNPH B&H

And you can rent them too. So yeah, you can get 10 of these for the price of that ONE 5D.

kaliuzhkin: About the same accuracy that you would get with the D300 WB set to Auto, direct sunlight, Shade, Incandescent, Fluorescent, flash, or cloudy.

That's not accurate if you again examine the range of possible colors. IF you're OK with a huge possible number of colors, use any camera; wrong tool, doesn't measure the spectrum but yeah, it provides a number (so what?).

kaliuzhkin: I shoot NEF (RAW) + JPEG. However, the only postprocessor I use is PaintShop Pro and that doesn't handle NEF very well. I haven't found any NEF editors that I like.

WB plays absolutely NO role with raw. Raw is raw. You can set any WB you desire. Raw is WB agnostic. Joe is correctly telling you that isn't the case with JPEG. It's 'baked' into the JPEG. And, be aware if you shoot raw+JPEG, one isn't ideally exposed (the raw). You OK with that? Because in the grand scheme of things, under exposing your raws is far more damaging and a more important consideration than WB which again plays zero role and has zero effect on the raw data. You can apply any WB setting you desire on raw. A setting that looks good to you rather than a number which means very little if anything. I think your attention here is misplaced.

What I want to explore is taking a picture of the grey card and using it as a reference. You can do that on the D300, but the reference picture has to be on the same memory card. In PSP, you use an eyedropper, but can you use a reference grey from another picture? Are the results even satisfactory?

A reference for WHAT? It's gray. And in raw, it's not even that. And it doesn't matter as Joe and I are trying to explain.

FWIW, in raw workflows, a gray card isn't ideal, a spectrally neutral white object is. That's WHY it's called White Balance. For rendered images, raw isn't rendered or gamma encoded, gray is the way to go. Not for raw.

Here's a very good and inexpensive way to shoot a reference for WB raw IN a converter:

DIY: Reliable and Cheap Universal White Balance Reference Device - Photography Life

I looked at FastRawViewer and now have many more questions. What is a RAW converter? What is embedded JPEG? Why is FastRawViewer even talking about JPG?

 

Where can I learn more about these things? Can you refer me to any books or web resources that would help me understand?

 

What about good, not too expensive, editing software which uses RAW photos and has cropping as an editing feature?

Any software that renders raw is a raw converter; Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw, Nikon Capture, dozens of others.

Raws have an embedded JPEG made by the camera; that’s what you see on the LCD on the camera. It isn’t the raw.

Book:

Digital Negative, The: Raw Image Processing in Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop, 2nd Edition | Peachpit

Two different model cameras, with the same settings, including WB, will have different color. I face this every day, balancing the color of two video cameras - one is a 3 CCD and the B-roll camera is a single Bayer sensor. The only way I find to cope with these difference is by comparing them side by side while making adjustments (grading). Fortunately I use Adobe Premiere Pro, which has excellent grading tools. Even so, small changed in exposure has a huge effect on the apparent color. So unless as the scene changes, you must re-balance the color. You can't make a global change that works everywhere. Hollywood can take a year or more to finish a job. Most of us have a week or two. At least with still photos, time is not a factor.

 

Is matching a problem? You bet it is! A digital camera can copy a positive slide very true to the original color. The same camera is nearly impossible to match in "film" colors starting from a raw image. In other words, accuracy doesn't alone buy you everything.

 

Lightroom has the same controls, and like Premiere Pro, adjustments are non-destructive, so you revert or modify the changes at any time, starting from any image type. Calibration makes that job consistent from the editing and printing process. Lightroom + Photoshop "rents" for $10/month. An XRite i1 Studio sells for about $400. It is a spectrophotometer in the Color Munki model, and measures monitors, prints, scanners, cameras and projectors. The i1 Pro does the same with more accuracy, but costs upwards of $1400.

 

You have to ask how much is it worth to get consistent results, and how much of your time is needed to get there? The alternatives include "Don't worry, be happy," or find another hobby.

A variant of what was once called the "Ozone System" (as contrasted to the Zone System), is to assign white to the lightest part of the image, and full black to the darkest.

This often shapes things up nicely enough so that more fine-tuning can be done with curves and such like, if necessary.

One month later -- having read all these replies I'm getting somewhere.

 

I'm still shooting RAW + JPEG but now my post-processing is RAW. I find Corel Aftershot easy to use.

 

I handle white balance in two ways. First, I set white balance in my camera using a WhiBal studio card. Second, I try to include a WhiBal pocket card in every shot. Then I can set white balance in Aftershot using an eyedropper. I can't do that for every shot so for those without a card in the picture, I rely on the former.

 

The option I asked about in the initial post, taking a picture of the WhiBal card, doesn't seem useful.

 

Several observations about using an eyedropper to set the white balance: Aftershot tells me the color temperature of every spot I pick. The values in white and in grey are similar. However, the temperatures vary by as much as 500K within a single picture. I try to pick a spot that's in the middle.

 

I'm reading up on these topics. Ben Long's Digital Photography seems like a good resource. Afterhot Pro: Non-destructive photo editing and management will be useful in learning about Aftershot.

 

Thanks for all the tips.

 

kaliuzhkin

Color correction and matching are a subset of what the movie industry calls "grading." Grading is all that plus adjusting the overall tone and cinematic effect across multiple cameras and takes. Often a special control console is used, typically with three track balls for hue and intensity for shadows, midrange and highlights, plus many sliders and controls for other effects. People who do this for a living are highly skilled (and paid accordingly).

 

Lightroom has simplified controls along these lines. Tone, for example, is divided into highlights, shadows, whites and blacks. Why is this important? Shadows often receive different illumination than highlights. Even outdoors, highlights represent direct illumination whereas shadows are governed by light reflected from other surfaces, if not the open sky itself.

 

Lightroom has a very powerful tool which allows you to split the screen showing before and after effects simultaneously. You can also show another image, dragged from the thumbnail panel, for direct comparison with the file being adjusted. The latter is essential if you wish to "match" images. I put that in quotes because it is difficult, if not impossible, to match different scenes in all respects.

 

I try to "match" my impression of the overall tone and feeling. Skin tones are important, but often other prominent features have more impact on that impression. I start by adjusting exposure and white balance, then fine tune the results using the tone sliders. Professional graders prefer color wheels, but I find them difficult to use without the associated hardware. Exposure has a profound effect on your impression of tone, and I frequently re-visit exposure and tone as I proceed. Quarter-stops count!

 

The beauty of Lightroom is the ease with which adjustments in one image can be copied to similar images. Wedding photos, for example, often fall into related blocks or scenes, including portraits, formal groups, and table shots. In general, it is more important to be consistent and "correct". That makes editing much easier, and your concept of "correct" may be change once you see the results.

 

One thing I find is that the eyedropper tools never work well. I don't even bother any more. There is nothing in real life that is white, black or neutral gray. Even if you use a color chart in the scene, it only represents the highlights. There is also a limit to which continuous tones can be represented as a balance of reg, green and blue, nor is RGB consistent between different cameras. In cinema, lighting is adjusted and balanced to within about 1/4 stop. That isn't real life either.

 

All this is predicated on calibrated, color-managed hardware and software. What's the point of spending time matching for consistency if you are consistently wrong?