White balance is the way we assess and establish the colours and tonal range of an image. It refers to the "all over" colour tone itself. Colour tone is the general colour that's cast right over the whole photo. When you take a photograph at home, with no flash, you will at times notice a blue colour tone cast over the scene.
Getting true white balance is one of the most imperative elements of taking pictures. When you have the correct white balance you will notice that colours look like they do in real life. Skin tones look actual also, instead of appearing plastic or too yellow. Accurate white balancing becomes a very significant element of portrait photography for this reason.
How do we produce correct colour? First we must to comprehend that there is no single set white balance for each situation. Each white balance feature on your camera, like Tungsten for instance, is not accurate for every occasion. Tungsten makes your photos look quite blue if they are shot in regular light. When you take photos of a subject that is underneath yellow lights it can make your scene appear too yellow.
Photographing in Tungsten will take away the influence of yellow and then take your photo back to a standard colour tone again. "Auto WB" is the accepted selection for most newbie photography enthusiasts. This is okay as long as you fine-tune your white balance in Photoshop or Lightroom later on.
You will discover that if you take pictures in auto WB regularly, your photos just won't look very natural. You will find that your pictures just don't reproduce the correct colours that you see with your naked eye.
Shade and cloudy are two favourites if you want to "warm up" your pictures. They offer a warm colour cast such as yellow, to overlay onto your images. This may be a great shooting mode especially at evening or dawn. Shade and cloudy can emphasise the vitality in your warmer colours. This makes sunsets and sunrises to look vibrant. This is a good preference for sunsets.
Shade and cloudy settings are not always suitable for portraits. The last thing we wish for in our wedding images is a yellow hue over a photo of the bride and groom. Tungsten is not correct either. We certainly do not want the bride and groom appearing too blue.
Auto doesn't always work for portraits because of the way the digital camera is built. The digital camera you have does not always understand what colours should be represented accurately. When you decide on auto white balance you give the camera free reign to do as it pleases. This doesn't work when you want true to life vibrancy.
True to life colour is dependent on "teaching" the camera to recognize colour. This is where custom white balance comes in. When you put a grey card in front of the digital camera and set your custom white balance to it, it then understands what's happening. It then sets all colour on both sides of that grey tone. It's quite difficult how it does this.
As a photographer all you need to understand is that colour needs to be true, and a grey card is the method to do it. Basically modify your white balance setting to custom. Then shoot a grey card with the right exposure. After that it's central to "set" the custom white balance from this photo.
You will notice that for that precise photo session, your colours come to life. You'll be able to see subtle colours like light pink, magenta and lemon yellow as they really are. White balance is one of the primary things to generating a superb image. If you follow these straightforward measures, no longer will you feel baffled about why you are not producing true colour. It will honestly change the way you look at photography forever.
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