Colour balance in photos

[ttgg]

Hello,

This is a sample of three photos taken at the same time of the day, of paintings made in the same off-white paper, against the same wall. Why each of them have a bit of a different colour to them? The second one is heavier in reds, and the third one in greens. Why each of them have a bit of a different colour to them? And how can I correct them?

Any help is really appreciated.

 

[NS: Nikon Shooter]

-

Just keep in mind that WB is the least critical of recorded parameters
because it won't make or break a capture. That said, right after the u-
sual DRL tweak, the second most important tweak — for my working
pleasure only — comes the WB tweak.

Why each of them have a bit of a different colour to them?

A complicated question. Many things will come in play and sometimes
interact weirdly (read interfere!):
— colour temperature of the light source,
— the reflected colour temperature of the paper,
— the reflected colour temperature of the paint, and
— the colour science behind the sensor among other things.

And how can I correct them?

Much simpler answers. The solutions are "a proper menu selection" and
"a reference".
— a proper menu selection: just to be sure to be in the right ballpark, in the
camera menu, select Auto WB.
– a reference: simply use a neutral grey card with every thing where not the
same rigorous shooting conditions are used.

Have a good time!

 

[Strodav]

As NS states, it's a white balance issue. You didn't mention the camera you are using, but unless you changed a setting, cameras come with auto white balance turned on, even cell phone cameras. That means the camera does it's best to analyze the color temperature of the light on the scene and decide what adjustments needs to be made to get the color "right". You are showing a very good example of how the camera often gets it wrong. Many cameras allow you to adjust the color temp manually in the menu before you take the shot to get the result you want, but white balance is so easy to fix in post processing, most of us just leave it in auto and fix it later.

You didn't mention what Post Processing software you are using if any. If you do use PP software, then you should see white balance controls like color temp and tint. There should be a display on your screen to tell you what the rgb values are as you move your cursor over your image. You can put your cursor over the white paper and adjust color temp and/or tint to make the paper white (or light gray), i.e, r=g=b. The rest of the colors should walk in. After you are happy with white balance the images may not be at the same brightness (another auto camera setting if you are in P mode) which you can adjust with the exposure slider in your PP software. At that point, the paper color and brightness should look the same to you on all 3 images.

 

[ttgg]

-

Just keep in mind that WB is the least critical of recorded parameters
because it won't make or break a capture. That said, right after the u-
sual DRL tweak, the second most important tweak — for my working
pleasure only — comes the WB tweak.


A complicated question. Many things will come in play and sometimes
interact weirdly (read interfere!):
— colour temperature of the light source,
— the reflected colour temperature of the paper,
— the reflected colour temperature of the paint, and
— the colour science behind the sensor among other things.


Much simpler answers. The solutions are "a proper menu selection" and
"a reference".
— a proper menu selection: just to be sure to be in the right ballpark, in the
camera menu, select Auto WB.
– a reference: simply use a neutral grey card with every thing where not the
same rigorous shooting conditions are used.

Have a good time!

Thank you so much! Will keep that in mind.

 

[ttgg]

As NS states, it's a white balance issue. You didn't mention the camera you are using, but unless you changed a setting, cameras come with auto white balance turned on, even cell phone cameras. That means the camera does it's best to analyze the color temperature of the light on the scene and decide what adjustments needs to be made to get the color "right". You are showing a very good example of how the camera often gets it wrong. Many cameras allow you to adjust the color temp manually in the menu before you take the shot to get the result you want, but white balance is so easy to fix in post processing, most of us just leave it in auto and fix it later.

You didn't mention what Post Processing software you are using if any. If you do use PP software, then you should see white balance controls like color temp and tint. There should be a display on your screen to tell you what the rgb values are as you move your cursor over your image. You can put your cursor over the white paper and adjust color temp and/or tint to make the paper white (or light gray), i.e, r=g=b. The rest of the colors should walk in. After you are happy with white balance the images may not be at the same brightness (another auto camera setting if you are in P mode) which you can adjust with the exposure slider in your PP software. At that point, the paper color and brightness should look the same to you on all 3 images.

I was not the one taking the photos, this was an acquaintance. But this didn't happen when taking photos with the phone, so both answers explain perfectly why it happened.

That's exactly the problem I am facing because the paper should be a bit yellow. I will try to find out how to do it in photoshop, but if you have any software to suggest, I'm all ears.

Thank you a lot!

 

[Strodav]

I was not the one taking the photos, this was an acquaintance. But this didn't happen when taking photos with the phone, so both answers explain perfectly why it happened.

That's exactly the problem I am facing because the paper should be a bit yellow. I will try to find out how to do it in photoshop, but if you have any software to suggest, I'm all ears.

Thank you a lot!

You didn't mention what camera was used, but most camera manufacturers provide editing software free with the camera. I use Adobe and Topaz PP software, but Nikon provides a fairly robust app called Capture NX-D for free. Of course, Photoshop will allow you to adjust color balance and exposure, but the learning curve is pretty steep. I use LightRoomClassic to start, can call on PS and Topaz apps as needed.

 

[ntz]

You can use awesome opensource RawTherapee .. I use it for myself as a primary tool for adjusting the RAW images ..

 

[manaheim]

Keep in mind a way to avoid this issue is also to take pictures in RAW and set your own color balance in post processing. Mind you, shooting in RAW opens up a whole pandora's box of other challenges... so I usually tell newbies to shoot RAW+JPEG so you have the camera's "try" to fall back to if needed.

The reason I recommend raw is that when you're shooting JPEG the camera "throws away" color information that it doesn't feel that you need. (JPEG is a lossy compression format). This will get you into situations where you want to swing the color balance back to "correct" and you basically can't.... good examples are strong off-color lighting, such as you find with street lights... but you'll even see the affects of this with incandescents in the house.

 

[DelminaNucci]

Colour balance is an awesome service that was created by adobe photoshop. You can change the photo color using adobe photoshop.

 

[mrca]

Simple solution. Include a color checker passport in one shot. In post run the software, perfect white balance. For reproduction work you want exact colors and this gives it to you. When photoing bridesmaid dresses that the bride painstakenly selected a particular color, it needs to be right. For portraiture on the other hand, I use the ccp to slightly warm the skin consistently across all the shots. Accurate skin tone isn't necessarily as flattering.

 

[Sharpshooterr]

Hello,

This is a sample of three photos taken at the same time of the day, of paintings made in the same off-white paper, against the same wall. Why each of them have a bit of a different colour to them? The second one is heavier in reds, and the third one in greens. Why each of them have a bit of a different colour to them? And how can I correct them?

Any help is really appreciated.

ttgg, as has been said WB can be changed in post BUT that said you really do have a problem here, not because it can't be changed but if you took 100 of these photos and you came up with 100 different colors them the amount of work to correct them all would be time prohibitive because you could NOT just do a couple of universal WB batch processes because they would of course all still be different.
I think a first importandt question is how different are the actual colors in the paintings from the originals? Are they acceptable or as different as the paper colors?
For the immediate but future problem you need to set a manual white balance in the camera using a part of the paper that is the same in all of them. Even if it's not a proper WB is not that critical. What's critical is that all the papers be the same or very close to it. In that way you can do a WB shift in PP to get the background paper color as it actually appears and PP all of the similar images together in a batch process. That should correct all of the colors in the image. And as was suggested, ALWAYS shoot in Raw to have a LOT more headroom to make any adjustments.
Good luck
SS

 

[snowbear]

The thread is four month's old and the OP hasn't been here since. Let's let this one rest in peace.