Correcting white balance using PSP or Photoshop

Hi folks,

 

Is there any way to fully apply white balance to scanned photos

using Paint Shop Pro (PSP) or Photoshop ???

I´m asking this because I´m planning to shot still lifes iluminated

by halogen light (low color temperature) and will use daylight color

film and scan the prints using a Canon flatbed scanner. If I can

fully eliminat the orange color cast of the photo using PSP or

Photoshop (maybe with some plug-in, I don´t know), it would be great.

 

Thanks for any help,

 

Charles

In PSP 7.04, which I use, this is very easy. Just open the scanned image and select the Auto Color Balance tool. Or, on the main menu click Effects > Enhance Photo > Automatic Color Balance. The default color balance on the Color Balance menu is daylight (6500 Kelvin). Use the slider bar/tool to increase or decrease the color temp. to your liking.

 

BTW, depending on which scanning software you're using, you may be able to adjust the color balance in the pre-scanning process.

IN PHOTOSHOP 7.0 & ALSO 6.0:<P>

LAYERS > ADJUSTMENT LAYERS> CURVES> WHITE POINT

EYEDROPPER TOOL,.<P>then move the cursor over a white point in the

image and click.<P>for more precision repeat th previous steps (create a

second curves layer) but use the black point tool on a black point.<P>Why

do this in layers?

Because it is easily undoable if you make a mistake without screwing up the

underlying image.<P>

Why are you not using a 3200K balanced color neg film like Kodak Portra

100T or Fuji NPL?

If the cast is strong, Photoshop will think it is intentional and not automatically correct it. In such cases, you can partially correct it manually (using Levels, Curves, Color Balance, etc.), and let Photoshop do the rest.

While the all the above have much merit, if your new to Photoshop a very quick visual aid for color balance in Photoshop 6.01 is to choose the following menu selections:

Image; Adjust; Variations; and fine-tune visually to your hearts content.

 

Always work on a copy of the original and you're out of harms way!

 

Be aware that the color balance of your monitor may play into the picture (pun intended)

Since you are shoting still lifes on a tripod, you can afford to loose 2 stops, using a 80B series blue filter. You can find it as camera filter or as a gel for the lights named CTB(full).

 

I preffer this method to the one using tungsten balanced film, finding that the late daylight emulsions have a much better quality than the T balnced ones. Also, you will never get a perfect correction in Photoshop, since the exposure levels of the layers is heavily unbalanced. Also, think about the time you spend with each image.

I would recommend using a decent color-balancing filter.

 

If you were scanning the negative, this would still be important, but since you're already losing data by scanning the print (where a LOT of information has been discarded already), the color imbalance is going to be pretty severe.

 

If you must do it this way, though, yes, you can get consistent color balancing via the following steps. (Other methods exist; this is just one way to get it consistently.)

 

1. Shoot a grey wedge and/or white card in the same light setup as the scene to be balanced.

 

2. Make sure that frame is printed the same way as the rest of the shoot.

 

3. Scan the print series and the 'balance' print using the same settings.

 

4. Open the 'balance' image, and [if using Photoshop] use the Levels or Curves tools [or adjustment layers if you are comfortable with them], use the neutral eyedropper to establish a neutral color balance by clicking on the white or gray steps in the wedge. SAVE that setting via the Save... button in the dialog.

 

5. For all the other images in the series, open the image, open the curves/levels palette (whichever you used earlier), and LOAD... the saved settings.

 

All the images should have a 'neutral' gray and white.

 

What they won't have is good detail in many of the areas, as there's not going to be much blue data to work with, and you're going to be lucky to have a few dozen different shades of blue data to work with, instead of the 200+ you'd get if you filtered on-camera.

 

I love Photoshop, but it's not always the 'right' tool for the job.