I own a Canon 40D. At times I get these blue/greenish skies, especially on bright sunny days. Is this happening because of my settings...is it better to use a custom K setting, such as 5200K? I have my camera set on "standard" which is OK, but would another setting prevent this from happening (I've tried faithful, and that's to gray card looking, and for my taste requires a lot of warming up in processing)...I haven't been able to do a lot of experimenting so thought I would ask. Any suggestions as to a setting (5200K etc.) that seems to be pretty good all the way around that doesn't require huge amounts of adjusting later that might prevent the color shift?
Thanks
Cynthia, if you capture in raw format you won't need to worry as much about white balance settings during capture... adjusting white balance in the computer is far easier with raw captures.
I almost always shoot on the Daylight white balance setting, unless I'm indoors.
If you like the in-camera "picture styles", current versions of Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw provide Camera Profiles that closely simulate these effects on raw captures.
Ditto what Nat said. I also shoot "daylight" unless I'm indoors, but it really doesn't matter to the RAW file.
If you've loaded the file into your computer as RAW and are still having this issue, then I think the green-magenta slider is in order. Color balance consists of three components.
Red-Cyan
Green-Magenta
Blue-Yellow
Moving towards Blue reduces yellow. Moving towards Magenta reduces Green.
Raw White Balance reduces that to two components by crossing the Red-Cyan and Blue-Yellow channels into a Orange-Bluish slider.
If you really want complete control, you can apply a curves layer in photoshop and then work on each color channel (R-G-B as presented in photoshop). When working in the Red curve, pulling the curve up increases the red balance, pulling it down shifts the image towards cyan. But this requires very fine adjustments and a careful eye on what you're doing.
If the overall balance of your images looks good to you and just the sky is bad, then you might want to work in the selective color adjustment tool. In this tool you can select certain ranges in the photo and then apply the shifts just within that range. For example, you could take the Blue channel and move the Green or Magenta slider towards Magenta. This will remove green from the deep blue sky. Choosing the "neutral" option in the selective color tool will allow your to fine tune the neutral balance in the image.
Cynthia, the best way to start off with a neutral color balance, which is always a good idea regardless of whether you shoot jpg or raw, is to do a gray or white card-based custom whiete balance calibration. Typically you set your camera to accept a custom WB, then point the camera at the card, making sure that the lens sees only the card and nothing else, and press the button to calibrate. As long as the card is neutral, your color balance will be perfect. The most accurate cards are available at photo supply stores.
Auto white balance only works within a small range, usually around 2800k to 5500k, and is only marginally accurate. It is also useless in non-continuous spectrum lighting situations, such as halogen, sodium vapor, LED, flourescent, etc.
When shooting raw, even though the camera is set to record whatever the sensor sees without in-camera processing, it still records the "as shot" white balance. It is still up to you to determine the correct balance. Doing it in post processing without a pure reference, such as a white or gray card included in the scene is usually hit or miss.
If adjusting to your eye is you choice, you must profile your monitor using a spyder or some sort of device that will read the colors on your screen and create a screen driver that compensates for any color shifts in the monitor as it comes out of the box. This way you will be working with a neutral (without color shift) viewing device with which to evaluate your images, and you will get a better chance of getting predictable results when you print.
A trick that I use when I shoot with AWB is to process the file in photoshop as a 16 bit tiff file. I make a duplicate of the image, use a blur(average) filter on the dupe. This averages all the color on the image and reduces it to a continuous tone. If there is a color cast it will show that, if not it will be either warm gray or cool gray or with some form of color cast. I then open up an levels adjustment layer on the original image, select the center eyedropper tool which sets the gray point, and pick a spot on the duplicate image. Nine times out of ten the original image will display an acceptable white balance.
Any time you make adjustments in post processing, whether you are making coarse corrections or just a slight white balance adjustment, you are losing color depth and introducing compression. If you capture the image correctly where you do the least amount of post-processing, your results will almost always be better.
Thanks guys...some of what you're talking about is way above my technical abilities...I only have the Canon software for processing at the moment...one reason I was trying to set my camera instead...I shoot everything in RAW. I have two examples that I will post as John requested...I'm curious as to what you will see...
Setting white balance in camera for a raw image is not a benefit, because it only sends a TAG with the raw file to the converter to tell the converter what settings to use (so it is still being done with the raw converter not in, or by the camera). The converters (like ACR...) have tools to nail it right there and fine tune it. So, most opt for the auto white balance setting. Then you actually decide at the raw stage (and it is lossless) and it usually takes a second to a few seconds, so even if you are in production work it is fast. I never set white balance in camera anymore. Never will.
Taking a wild stab Cynthia, are you near any forest fires, close enough for hazy smoke barely visible to the eye? Green skies, fer sure. Same for some industrial smoke or haze. The suggestions here for post processing are good, but it may have absolutely to do with your camera.
Discussion
7 repliesThanks
I almost always shoot on the Daylight white balance setting, unless I'm indoors.
If you like the in-camera "picture styles", current versions of Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw provide Camera Profiles that closely simulate these effects on raw captures.
If you've loaded the file into your computer as RAW and are still having this issue, then I think the green-magenta slider is in order. Color balance consists of three components.
Red-Cyan
Green-Magenta
Blue-Yellow
Moving towards Blue reduces yellow. Moving towards Magenta reduces Green.
Raw White Balance reduces that to two components by crossing the Red-Cyan and Blue-Yellow channels into a Orange-Bluish slider.
If you really want complete control, you can apply a curves layer in photoshop and then work on each color channel (R-G-B as presented in photoshop). When working in the Red curve, pulling the curve up increases the red balance, pulling it down shifts the image towards cyan. But this requires very fine adjustments and a careful eye on what you're doing.
If the overall balance of your images looks good to you and just the sky is bad, then you might want to work in the selective color adjustment tool. In this tool you can select certain ranges in the photo and then apply the shifts just within that range. For example, you could take the Blue channel and move the Green or Magenta slider towards Magenta. This will remove green from the deep blue sky. Choosing the "neutral" option in the selective color tool will allow your to fine tune the neutral balance in the image.
There may be a simpler solution.
Auto white balance only works within a small range, usually around 2800k to 5500k, and is only marginally accurate. It is also useless in non-continuous spectrum lighting situations, such as halogen, sodium vapor, LED, flourescent, etc.
When shooting raw, even though the camera is set to record whatever the sensor sees without in-camera processing, it still records the "as shot" white balance. It is still up to you to determine the correct balance. Doing it in post processing without a pure reference, such as a white or gray card included in the scene is usually hit or miss.
If adjusting to your eye is you choice, you must profile your monitor using a spyder or some sort of device that will read the colors on your screen and create a screen driver that compensates for any color shifts in the monitor as it comes out of the box. This way you will be working with a neutral (without color shift) viewing device with which to evaluate your images, and you will get a better chance of getting predictable results when you print.
A trick that I use when I shoot with AWB is to process the file in photoshop as a 16 bit tiff file. I make a duplicate of the image, use a blur(average) filter on the dupe. This averages all the color on the image and reduces it to a continuous tone. If there is a color cast it will show that, if not it will be either warm gray or cool gray or with some form of color cast. I then open up an levels adjustment layer on the original image, select the center eyedropper tool which sets the gray point, and pick a spot on the duplicate image. Nine times out of ten the original image will display an acceptable white balance.
Any time you make adjustments in post processing, whether you are making coarse corrections or just a slight white balance adjustment, you are losing color depth and introducing compression. If you capture the image correctly where you do the least amount of post-processing, your results will almost always be better.
Hope this helps.