Photography News issue 22

Technique 53

Photography News Issue 22 absolutephoto.com

Photo school

Camera class We all have to start somewhere, and in Photo school we look at the core skills every beginner needs. This month, how to perfect your colours in-camera and in Lightroom

Manual 4700K

Daylight 5500K

Tungsten 2850K

Words & pictures by Kingsley Singleton

We worry a lot less about colour these days than we used to, and with good reason; the ability to improve Raw files in software means that true-to-life hues are only a few clicks of the mouse away. But the mark of a good photographer is getting shots as close to perfection as possible when shooting. So how do you get to grips with colour in camera? Primarily it’s about taking control of your white- balance settings. White-balance controls how the camera responds to the various temperatures of light; in a nutshell, light from a lamp has a lower temperature than light from the sun; so the camera can only reproduce one or the other in a lifelike way if it’s set up correctly. Most of the time, you can leave thewhite-balance set to Auto or AWB and it will take a good reading of the scene, but in some

circumstances, it can get confused. This happens most often at sunset, around dawn or dusk, and where artificial and natural light mix, as in low-light shots. In these cases, it’s better to take control yourself. Setting the white-balance Using a white-balance preset that’s suitable for the conditions is the first step to more accurate colours. It’s done either via a button on the body or by going into a menu, and the choice of presets usually runs to six: tungsten or fluorescent for man- made lighting; daylight, cloudy and shade for natural light; and flash for when you’re adding the light yourself with a flashgun. One of these should put you in the right area. If things still don’t look quite right, you can dial in the specific colour temperature you want using Kelvin;

this is offered on most creative cameras under a ‘K’, and it’s what we did on the shot to the right, because the daylight setting was too warm and the tungsten setting too cool. On many DSLRs you can also fine-tune your white-balance presets and the Auto setting. For example, if colours always seem a little too cool when you’re usingAuto, you can bias the reading by a few hundred Kelvin tomake it more pleasing. Taking a white-balance reading The most accurate route is to take a customreading. Essentially you need to fill the frame with an 18% grey or purewhite subject in the light you are shooting in. You can use a dedicated white-balance card like an X-Rite ColorChecker or simply a piece of white paper, or you can meter off parts of the scene, like a white wall.

Right Your camera has lots of white-balance settings, and although Auto usually does a good job, it’s often better to set the white- balance manually. Above You can see the difference between the Daylight (too warm), Tungsten (too cool), and the manually set value (just right).

Adobe Lightroom

Software skills One of the big advantages of shooting in Raw is controlling white-balance when editing. Here’s how…

Option 2: Use the presets Within the Library module’s Quick Develop panel and the Develop module’s Basic tab you’ll find a White Balance (or WB) heading. Clicking on the menu next to this brings up a familiar range of presets, pretty much the same as those found on your camera – Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, Tungsten, Fluorescent and Flash. You can pick the one relevant to the shooting conditions. In the same list are As Shot, Auto and Custom. As Shot (the default on opening) keeps the white- balance at its original temperature, while Auto applies Lightroom’s best guess. It’s worth trying these options before you move into Custom. If the file is a JPEG, you are much more limited in options and all you’ll see are As Shot, Auto and Custom. Option 3: Temp and Tint sliders For an even broader range of temperatures than the presets, use the Basic tab’s Temp slider, which operates in K (Kelvin). The options extend from 2000K to 50,000K, but you’re unlikely to use it much outside the preset range – it’s more for making minor shifts, for example, making a Daylight (5500K) setting slightly warmer or cooler without going as far as the next preset. Cycle through the presets in the menu above and you can see the actual change in temperature, then move the slider to make more subtle shifts in the colours. The Tint slider only comes in to play if you need to correct a magenta or green cast, making it most useful on pictures taken in fluorescent lighting.

You should always try to get the white-balance correct in-camera, but if you need to work faster than this allows, or you’re not getting the results you want, you can always fine-tune it in software. Adobe Lightroom makes controlling a picture’s white-balance very easy and there are several ways to do it, meaning you can find the right one for you as well as the image. However, just as with exposure control, the options are more limited with JPEGs, so the best results will come from Raw files. If you’re working in consistent lighting, such as with flash in a studio, try shooting a white-balance (or even a sheet of white paper) card or gadget in the same light; you can then use this to precisely set the white-balance using Option 1 below. Option 1: White Balance Selector tool Like taking a manual reading from the scene, theWhite Balance Selector tool can be used to click directly on any part of the picture to set the colours. This makes it the most accurate option. However, you need to click on a neutral colour or it won’t work. Fortunately, after you’ve clicked on the tool in the panel to make it active (or hit W), there’s a preview showing the tones you’re using in detail. Move around the image until the R, G and B values are balanced (or as close as possible) and click. Balanced values in the image usually mean greys or whites (use a white-balance card if you have one), but black areas can also be used. In the example on the left, we clicked on the rocks, getting a Temp of 4800K; cooler and truer than the As Shot reading.