rthompson10

All,

Diving more into basic post processing and I've a dumb question. Short a sporting event the other day and my camera was set on Auto white balance- it was a sunny day. When I look at my pix in lightroom there is a range of color temp from 4600 to 5300/5500 range obviously leading to a variation of how things looked.
How do people treat this? Keep as shot, auto, switch to sunny or treat each shot individually as to how it looks?Make all the pix look consistent?
My problem is I'm trying to figure out what looks "good" don't seem to have a good eye for that yet
Thanks!
RT

dirtpusher Loc: tulsa oklahoma

will this help?

http://media.digitalcameraworld.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/123/2012/05/Free_colour_temperature_scale_photography_cheat_sheet.jpeg

http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/2015/10/19/what-is-color-temperature-free-photography-cheat-sheet-2/

PixelStan77 Loc: Vermont/Chicago

The color of daylight changes from sunrise to sunset. That is what you are seeing in LR. I would evaluate the image and adjust it to your visual taste

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

As long as you are shooting Raw not a problem in LR I correct the WB on one picture then select all the picturfes and just synch WB

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I'd make adjustments in LR till the shot looked "right," whatever that means. As you say, it can be difficult deciding what is right.

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

They are YOUR images---use Lightroom to adjust each one to YOUR liking.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

RT, you just discovered the hardest technical thing to deal with in all photography. The big problem is deciding whether you want to reproduce the original colors accurately or altering them to satisfy your esthetic. To compound the problem is that we do not remember color well and that how we view the picture affects the color. My approach is to capture the original color as accurately as I can because I prefer the original look and alter it later if I wish.

Having laid out the issue, the question is now how to get the "right" color. Gray cards, camera presets, and white paper are out. Go with a professional tool like X-Rite ColorChecker, ExpoDisc or a color temperature meter. I use ExpoDisc because I find it to be easy to use and accurate enough for my purposes. You will save a lot of time and have more fun using any of these methods to eliminate the uncertainty of color balance.

joseph premanandan

as long as you are shooting in RAW,there is no problem in using auto whitebalance and once you do that,use the eye dropper icon in the whitebalance section in the lightroom and move it to the left and you have many options,try to chose grey colored multiple squares or the white ones and then click on it and that will be your ideal white balance.some times the grey or white colored squares depicting the ideal white balance may not pop up,in that case,move your whitebalance slider to the right to get warmer balance.hope this helps,joseph

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

I disagree with this advice. This presumes the picture has a large enough area of the true white. And if the shot has several "white", then you have to guess which one is right. Furthermore, you are adjusting the white balance to what looks "right" or good to you. That is subjective and beginners will have a lot of trouble figuring out what is an accurate versus esthetic balance. Why guess when several excellent tools are available?

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

It sounds as if you were shooting in the shade and out in full sun. That makes a big difference in the color of light, as well as it changing during the course of the day. You really don't have much choice but to use Auto WB for situations like that... if you had instead selected one of the presets (i.e., sun, cloudy, shady, etc.), it would have been worse.... more of your images would have been incorrectly balanced.

I use LR and work through the images adjusting them individually. To save a lot of time, once you've adjusted an image to your liking in the Develop module, if the next image is similar you can use the "Previous" button to apply all the same corrections to it. Since you probably have groups of shots that are similar, this can be a real time saver.

Note: Is you computer monitor calibrated? If not, you likely aren't adjusting your images very accurately. Most monitors require calibration... First for brightness, especially, then for how they render colors. And, because they change over time, they need to be re-calibrated occasionally.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

Alan, a bigger timesaver is to use one of the tools I suggested above.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

That's what auto white balance (AWB) does. It adjusts the color temp per picture. Shoot the same scene you will get a consistent color temp but in varying light the color temp will vary. This can be a "doubled edged" sword. It can work well or it can yield variations you don't like. For example if your shooting outdoors and the sun goes behind a cloud AWB can be your friend. However if your shooting on a sunny day and panning the camera with different backgrounds AWB might change in ways you don't want it to.

And some cameras have better AWB functions than others.

So what to do now? If you don't like some of the images because of poor color, your stuck with either discarding them or fixing them individually in post.

As for next time some good suggestions have been made as how to achieve better color in camera, but it is hard to get athletes to hold grey cards while they are playing. LOL.

Also, as was noted by Amfoto1, monitor calibration is the first step to "check off" before changing colors on dozens of images. If the monitor is off color, then all of the images will look off color and you will correct them but then they will be off color when you print them or when viewed by people with calibrated monitors. So give that some thought too.

As for what looks good, it takes time to develop the skill, and confidence, to know, but for starters, just make changes and compare them to the what you had before, and go with the one you like better.

Good luck.

rthompson10

All,

Thanks for the input!

RT