GUIDE TO SHOOTING RAW PART II

WHITE BALANCE

The advantage of using raw files isn’t just about detail. Mat Gallagher explains how you can use your raw software to achieve more accurate colour in your images

     WHEN you compare raw and JPEG images on screen they might not look that different, but when you edit them they become worlds apart. The ability to alter colour in a raw state means you are truly mixing the colours, balancing percentages of reds, greens and blues but always coming out with 100%
With a JPEG, however, removing some of one colour simply lea/es you with less colour range. For this reason, any colour correction is best performed in raw.

     White balance values are not final when shooting in raw format, which means the decision about which values to use can be made at the processing stage. When the raw file is loaded into your raw-conversion software your chosen white balance will be displayed, but whether you got it spot on or wildly wrong the colours displayed have no bearing on the final output quality once it is corrected

CAMERA PRESETS

     As a first step, most editing packages will give you the ability to choose from a range of presets that are similar to those in the camera's white balance menu. It the software you are using is the manufacturer's own, these presets are likely to be identical, whereas third-party software may offer a more generic list that includes daylight, cloudy, tungsten, fluorescent and so on.

AUTO

     Much like your camera's auto white balance setting, most raw-conversion software features a one-dick auto setting for quick adjustment This will use the program's own algorithms to determine the correct colour temperature for the scene and may differ from the auto setting in-camera. The auto selection can always be used as a starting point before fine-tuning manually

MANUAL CONTROL (SLIDER)

     For a more controlled adjustment, your software should allow you to change the white balance with regard to the colour temperature In Adobe Lightroom, for example, this is offered in three different ways. In the quick menu, a basic warmer/ cooler control is shown, which warms or cools in steps of around 300K In the main Develop section, the temperature can be controlled with a slider or by entering a numeric value, as ts common to most editing software In addition to the colour temperature, a tint slider often allows you to add and remove certain colour casts that are caused by some light sources or environments

DROPPER

     The dropper solution allows you to sample from an area of your image where there should be a neutral colour Once this is selected, the software will automatically adjust the white balance to correspond with your selection Clicking on a non-neutral tone or a bright white area of the image can cause unusual colour effects, so often a number of clicks are needed to find a suitable sample point. It is good practice to achieve a base white balance value with the dropper and then use the temperature and tint sliders to fine-tune your white balance to achieve the desired effect.

USING A COLOUR CHART/GREY CARD

A common way to achieve accurate white balance settings is to use a grey card or colour checker card from which you can take readings and set a manual white balance. For JPEG files this has to be set in the camera, but with raw capture you can simply take a photograph of the chart and then use the image to set your white balance in the software - using the Dropper tool on the mid grey - and then apply it to the other mages.

‘For a more controlled adjustment, your software should allow you to change the white balance with regard to the colour temperature’

SYNC SETTINGS

Although the beauty of adjusting your white balance in raw is that you are free to change the setting for each image as you review it, if you have shot lots of images under the same lighting you can often save time by synchronising the white balance across all the files. Once you have fine- tuned your white balance settings for the first image, most software will allow you to copy and paste these settings onto your other images, or simply select the images and sync the settings across all them This can also work for other colour and exposure settings.